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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26585587">Blood From Grapes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiznakeries/pseuds/quiznakeries'>quiznakeries</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lips Like Blood &amp; Wine [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Voltron: Legendary Defender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Age Difference, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Chronic Pain, Divorced Shiro (Voltron), Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Established Relationship, F/F, Female Adam (Voltron), Female Keith (Voltron), Female Shiro (Voltron), Femslash, Genderbending, Kidnapping, Kuron &amp; Shiro (Voltron) are Twins, M/M, Past Infidelity, Past Sexual Abuse, Physical Abuse, Shiro (Voltron) Whump, Substance Abuse, Thriller Mystery, Torture, all kinds of abuse really lmao</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:47:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>44,652</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26585587</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiznakeries/pseuds/quiznakeries</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Takashi Shirogane has come to be many things. Crime novelist, business woman, wine collector under the eyes of the masses. No more than a wordless cripple and divorcée on her bad days. In pain most of the time.</p><p>In love always.</p><p>But then Keith leaves, and Shiro thinks a broken heart may be her biggest challenge yet.</p><p>She doesn’t know how wrong she is until the first package arrives, and she suddenly finds herself in the center of something much darker.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hunk/Lance (Voltron), Keith/Shiro (Voltron)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lips Like Blood &amp; Wine [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2152791</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Femsheith Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Aglianico</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vilna/gifts">Vilna</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is my contribution to the #FEMSHEITHEXCHANGE<br/>(Because of the plot's nature, and the fact it turned out so god damn long, I'm not posting the entire thing right away. I'm putting the finishing touches on the last chapter so it's finished tho! No worries.)</p><p>SO</p><p>To my lovely recipient Vilna, I hope you’ll enjoy this monster that I somehow ended up creating. I just wanna say; no pressure to read it all if long fics ain’t your thing or you can’t have time/energy, it totally got away from me idk how I ended up here.</p><p>Anyway! I don’t trust my ability to write fantasy, but I got hung up on your idea of sheith coming from two different worlds, so I wanted to interpret that in what I wrote. And I wanted some of that delicious angst and breakup feelings you mentioned, but with a twist which I think came out pretty well! I’ve had a blast writing this thing and hope it ticks enough of your boxes to be enjoyable!</p><p>Like a real nerd, I've made a <a href="https://www.pinterest.se/lobackberg/blood-from-grapes/">Pinterest board</a> as well as a <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2nspMS3YXyYWTMNA0P2Fll?si=JWdtVmvqQOOihNHn6XJT1A">Playlist</a> to go with the fic!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Chapter 1,</p>
<p>
  <strong>Aglianico, </strong>
  <em>
    <span><strong>type: Blue.</strong> </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>An ancient grape. You’ll find it reaching for high altitudes, ripening under long exposure to light, rooted in rich, volcanic soil. Little known but powerful, Aglianico is the oldest cultivated grape in the world.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p><br/>
~*~<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro doesn’t know how she got here. Her head is in a fog, but recognizing the streets of Boston is never hard for her. She grew up here, just a few blocks from where she’s finding herself standing in the middle of the road. But as her vision clears, all the things amiss begin to register. Most protruding is the silence, absolute and not belonging. There are no people bustling on the sidewalk, no trash or leaves rustling along the edge. No cars honking and piling up around her where she stands. Above her, the sky is empty and grey. All around, it’s like a filter muting all the colors.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She dares a slow step forward, and she half expects the illusion to crack, because there’s an urgent sense of fragility prickling under her skin, like the ground beneath her feet, or perhaps her own body, is made of paper thin glass. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Something is threatening to break, but she can’t put a finger on what it is.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But nothing happens as she moves.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She takes another step, and another. Before she can think better of it, she’s jogging down the street, drawn to continue, to search, to find something.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The buildings around her have no doors, no windows. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She glances at them as she passes them by, thinks maybe it should be weird how the archway to a hotel entrance she knows well is bricked up and dark. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But it’s not. It’s not what’s important now.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro nears a corner, her feet carrying her faster and faster without her knowing why. She’s no more than a few feet from the end of the building where the road splits, when something flashes a brilliant purple. It can’t last for more than a second, but the bright light of a figure disappearing down the street she aimed to take leaves a faint imprint, on her corneas, in her mind, something.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She runs faster, swears when the paved road becomes tougher to move over. It’s like running on pillows, soft and giving and making her strides too heavy. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Something aches in her chest, and it’s not exertion. It’s something deeper, more painful.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Ahead of her, the purple figure moves like smoke in a wind that doesn’t exist.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro follows it, darting down narrow streets and across empty yards like a cat chasing a feather on a string. The city around her is turning darker, as the figure becomes brighter, starting to glow as if it sucked up all the light.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She isn’t breathing heavily, not sweating. But her heart thunders in her chest, the only proof of how she’s run for at least a mile chasing this thing.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It seems like it’ll last forever, like even if she tried to stop her feet her body will pull towards the purple glow until her body breaks.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>So when her target gracefully halts, and light feet touch the ground as the shimmering smoke shapes into something human, Shiro stumbles on the pavement. When she rights herself, the being is standing in front of her, fifteen feet or less between them now. Shiro drinks it in, the lithe silhouette with long legs and straight shoulders, long hair flowing in the air as if underwater.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Behind the ghost of opaque bangs, bright eyes wait to meet Shiro’s, twinkling like stars and so devastatingly familiar. The ache in Shiro doubles, claws at the delicate walls on her heart.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Keith-” Shiro tries to speak, to call the name weighing heavy on her tongue, but no sound breaks the silence. She tries over and over, panic rising and making her blood rush because </span>
  <em>
    <span>Keith can’t hear her</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She breaks the distance even as the unwelcome knowledge things are hopeless begins to climb the knobs of her spine. Her hands pass through Keith’s figure, and the perfect image breaks where her hands grab for slim arms, repairs itself when she pulls back. Keith tips her head down to watch the smoke reform her elbows, unphased. Her expression is closed off, emotionless. Still, when she looks back at Shiro and slides a step away, Shiro can’t read anything on that face she knows better than probably anything.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“No, Keith-” Shiro pleads without sound, unable to stop Keith from moving further away. “Keith!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She reaches out, attempts to go after her, restart the chase just to see wide eyes looking back at her. But the moment her foot touches ground, a searing pain slices through her leg. It’s instant, and blinding, like tearing muscle, fracturing bones.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>--</span>
</p>
<p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro wakes with a scream that shatters the stillness in the room, shooting upright to wrap her hands around her throbbing thigh. Sweat pearls at her hairline, hot and cold alike washing over her skin as she rides out the spasm, waiting for the pain to cease.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>When it’s over, she falls back onto her plush pillows, panting. The only sound is her heart thumping in her ears.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She gulps in air, vision swimming as she stares straight at the ceiling. Minutes pass where all she can do is breathe, waiting out the lingering pulse of pain. As so many times before, she focuses on tracing the delicate pattern carved on the ceiling, following the swirling lines and trying not to think about the pain nor about her dream.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And as most other times, she fails splendidly.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The room is still dark, lit only by the moon outside the tall windows on the opposite wall. She knows when she looks at the screen on her phone the time will read five am or earlier, just like every other morning in the past two weeks. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But today she doesn’t feel the pull, the need to go back to sleep. To pop another pill and spend the next few hours blissfully disconnected from the real world. Instead, she feels a chill squeezing on her lungs, something terrible simmering just beneath the surface and it’s keeping her wide awake.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Typical, adding paranoia to her list of problems is definitely not what she needs. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>What she does need is a cup of tea.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>With a hiss and a grimace, Shiro throws her legs off the edge of the bed, hauling herself up to sit. For a long moment, she just sits there, glaring at the sleek wooden cane glinting back at her where it rests against the bedside table. Never has she had such mixed feelings about an object as she does with this one. On one hand, it’s a piece of art. Hand crafted, with a dark oiled, glossy walnut shaft and chrome detailing, the handle beautifully engraved with a small, discreet floral pattern. And it was a gift, the first real gift Keith ever gave her. It’s a memory and gesture that she has treasured ever since.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But she also hates it solely for its purpose. At thirty eight years old, she’s too young to need a cane in order to walk properly. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lately, however, the damned stick sours her mood for the same reason she’s been attached to it before. Because despite her best efforts to ignore reality by sleeping and drinking her days away, it remains true that Keith is gone.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And after fourteen days of clinging foolishly to hope, and two of bitterly breaking it down, it’s become clear.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She is not coming back.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>—</span>
</p>
<p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The kitchen lights are too harsh when they flicker on, and Shiro squints in annoyance. Why she hasn't had dimmers installed on all lamps throughout the house, though, is a mystery she currently has no patience to solve.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She prepares the tea with a forced calm, something that sits bone deep in her, imprinted on her by her father very long ago. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>You cannot rush good tea.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Over time, Shiro has come to realize it’s just as much the act of preparing it that soothes her as the beverage itself. Getting the water to the right temperature, and letting the leaves steep undisturbed is key.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>As she pours the hot water into the filter of a small, clear glass teapot, she feels her flaring temper slip away with the steam. She breathes in the warm, floral smell, and it settles like a blanket over the ache lingering in her chest.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s often quiet in this house, big and empty as it is. But the early morning silence, before the world outside awakens, doesn’t feel as sad to Shiro as the echo of empty rooms in the light of day do. It’s still, and almost comforting. Behind her, past the marble-top island and the breakfast table, a pair of massive, arched windows take up most of the back wall. Beyond the polished glass, the garden sits in darkness, waiting for twilight.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>These are the hours when she used to get the most writing done, when she was younger.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She’s just removed the filter and set it in the sink, when the heavy thud and click of the front door travels through the empty hall. Shiro stiffens, throwing a glance at the big antique clock sitting next to the kitchen entrance. It’s 4:45 in the morning. Too early for any of the very few keyholders to her home to be coming or going, but-</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She can’t help the flicker of hope to see a head of raven hair appearing in the entryway. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But as the sound of footfalls carry down the little corridor from the hallway, Shiro’s heart sinks as fast as it rose. A breath she didn’t know she was holding escapes in a puff of air, a little scoff to match the annoyance flaring up again. She turns back to her tea, setting the pot and a little ceramic cup on a tray with some crackers. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And when the thumps of boots are within reach of her voice, she speaks.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“May I ask what the hell you’re up to sneaking around at this hour?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She picks up the tray in one hand, the other reaching for her cane. In the door stands a man, a passive expression on weathered features. Tall and broad, he makes an intimidating figure. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’d like to think after all these years I would have earned the trust to come and go as I please.” Kolivan says. His voice is rough and stoik on the surface, but it’s no challenge for Shiro to detect the hint at a challenge in his tone.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn’t care much for his attitude.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The tray rattles as she sets it down on the massive oak table with a touch too much force. She doesn’t spare the man another glance, settling into her seat and starting to pour her tea.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You can do whatever you like as long as it doesn’t interfere with your responsibilities, caretaker.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro can practically feel the undignified glare dying to break Kolivan’s mask of collected calm. Since she hired him, well over ten years ago, the number of times he’s let his emotions get the best of him can be counted on one hand. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith used to itch to make him break.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He leaves without another word, disappearing deeper into the house until Shiro can no longer hear the tap of his steps.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She allows herself to ponder for a bit, what Kolivan might have been up to outside the house at this hour. Had he been gone all night? Did he meet someone?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In all the time that Kolivan has been taking care of her property, she’s never learned much about his personal life. Mostly, because he’s never seemed to have much of one. He’s always been quiet and private, keeps to himself most of the time when he isn’t actively working. All Shiro really knows about the version of Kolivan that isn’t her employee, is that he has a weakness for vintage cars. Which is why, for his fiftieth birthday, she got him a Pontiac Bonneville from 1960. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It was the one and only time Shiro has ever seen, and probably ever will see, that big man’s eyes turn soft and teary.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In turn, Keith had looked at Kolivan like he was growing horns right before their very eyes. She’d grabbed Shiro by the arm and whispered; “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Did you break him? Babe, holy shit-</span>
  </em>
  <span>“.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro groans over the lip of her cup, brows furrowing in frustration because whatever trail of thought she finds herself on, they all lead back to Keith. She knows it’s supposedly normal to feel like shit still two weeks after a breakup, but it doesn’t stop her from feeling impossibly weak for not letting go.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith clearly has.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>At the very least, she must be trying harder than Shiro can find it in herself to. Countless unanswered calls, probably thrice as many texts that have never been opened.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Had it been anyone else, Shiro would have worried. Worried that perhaps Keith ran into trouble, that she needed help. But Shiro knows well what spirit she fell in love with in the first place, knows about Keith’s past. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Knows this isn’t the first time Keith has run away without a word.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And they had a terrible fight. By far the worst they ever had, even if the topic was hardly new.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro had known she was in for trouble the moment she heard Keith call her name from down the hall. Two syllables have never sounded so furious. She had risen to her feet just seconds before the door to her home office burst open, slammed against the wall so hard the bookshelf shook.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith reminded her of a wild animal when she got angry, puffed up like a cat and large eyes shooting daggers. Shiro blinked at her, and at the phone she held like a weapon she pointed at Shiro, speechless.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“A dude from my bank just called.” Keith had spoken through gritted teeth. “To confirm on receiving the payoff on my student loans.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Stupidly, Shiro had felt calmer hearing this. Like maybe it wasn’t going to be a huge deal in the end. Keith would understand, she was sure.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Surprise?” Shiro had said to her, going for a sheepish smile and shrug of her shoulder.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It was a bad, bad move, that resulted in Keith throwing her phone straight for Shiro. She just barely averted it, gasping in pain when she steadied herself on her bad leg.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I can’t fucking believe you! We’ve</span>
  <em>
    <span> talked </span>
  </em>
  <span>about this, you-” Keith paused to breathe, looking like she might actually burst into flame at any moment. “You </span>
  <em>
    <span>cannot </span>
  </em>
  <span>keep butting into my finances without </span>
  <em>
    <span>speaking </span>
  </em>
  <span>to me first, I- you-”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Whatever Keith was trying to say disappeared into a stream of muttered curses, and Shiro took the slight pause as an opening to try and explain herself.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry.” She began, tentatively, to move around the desk towards her girlfriend. “I was going to tell you at dinner, I didn’t know they would call you, it was-” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s not the point, Shiro!” Keith yelled, staring at Shiro as if daring her to move any closer. “I’m so fucking mad at you. How many times-”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I just saw you got a payment notice and I figured, now that you officially live here and everything-” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro didn’t get to finish her thought, to explain how she was going to suggest they start sharing their expenses more fairly now that they’ve committed to sharing their lives and their space. She saw it on Keith’s bristling expression, that she’d said something wrong.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You-” Her voice trembled, so absolutely furious she could hardly get the words out. “You opened my mail, too?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro hesitated. She knew she shouldn’t have done that in the first place, but it just happened, and once the letter was already open and read-</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I did.” She confessed, voice small. “I didn’t think about it, I always took care of all the mail, when I was married to-“</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“But you’re not married to me, are you?” Keith screamed the words at Shiro, and they stung. More than they had any right to when Keith was the one crying. “I moved in here </span>
  <em>
    <span>three</span>
  </em>
  <span> months ago. You know how hard this shit is for me and you- you-“</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The fight only continued getting worse, Keith screaming and crying and shoving at Shiro every time she made a futile attempt to get close. It broke Shiro’s heart, all of it, and by the time Keith stormed out of the office, Shiro was crying just as hard.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She had tried to reason with Keith, at least enough to make her stay. But Keith pulled a duffle bag from the closet, suddenly quiet. She didn’t yell when Shiro tried prying the sweatshirt from her hands as she tried to pack it, just let go and went for another one. She didn’t swear or glare or spit anymore, nothing but snivels and ready hiccups to meet Shiro’s words.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She didn’t speak again until the bag was slung over her shoulder, and Shiro blocked her path.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Get out of my way Shiro.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But Shiro had shaken her head so desperately her neck hurt, salty drops flying from the ends of her eyelashes.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith had closed her eyes where she stood, taken a long breath.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Before she made her next move, Shiro already had her hand digging through her front pocket for the keys. The sound was enough to make Keith peek, down at their hands as Shiro placed the keys to her Mercedes in Keith’s palm.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She closed Keith’s fingers around them, and cupped her smaller hand in both of her own.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Her last words to Keith came out as no more than a faint whisper. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“At least say you’ll come back?” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But Keith had made no promises, and left not in Shiro’s offered car but in her own.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>--</span>
</p>
<p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro’s tea turns cold.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She’s been over the memory of Keith leaving so many times, re-lived that late September afternoon because while it tears her heart apart, it’s the clearest vision of Keith she has. And she’ll take it, tears and all, because with all the things that hurt Shiro can also recall more pleasant things so easily. The familiar feeling of Keith’s hand in hers, soft and warm. Her smoky, woodsy smell. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Eyes such a startling blue they stole Shiro’s breath away, looking back at her.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith was an experience Shiro thought she already knew, when they first met. Shiro never doubted it, that she had felt and knew what it was like, to truly be in love.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She had married her high school sweetheart. Devoted herself to someone who made her heart swell, who’s touch made her skin tingle. Someone who knew her, and that she knew in turn. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There was never any doubt that what they had was love. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But loving Keith was, </span>
  <em>
    <span>-is</span>
  </em>
  <span>, not in any way like Shiro thought love was supposed to be. It has never been easy, and yet it’s never been burdensome. It’s messy, and changing, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>alive</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It’s been chaos from the start but Shiro found herself safe in the eye of the storm, as long as Keith was there to keep the balance.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And ever since she left, Shiro has been caught in a whirlwind she can’t control, and she’s just waiting for it to spit her out and send her flying like a piece of debris. To crash back onto earth.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The clock on the wall counts the minutes, and Shiro loses herself to her thoughts. She doesn’t move in her seat at the table, until the chill and stiffness of her bones become too much, and a morning sun has begun to rise over distant tree tops.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s good to see the sun. For days and days, all there’s been is rain. Fitting for days sulking and working from home, but feeding her melancholy far too much with the patter of droplets on her window and grey skies above. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>When was even the last time she left the house?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro grunts softly time herself, feeling the blood return to her feet and fingertips as she finally stands to leave.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Back in her bedroom on the second floor of the house, windows overlooking the little lake and its halo of autumn tree crowns, Shiro wriggles into a comfortable pair of silky dress pants and changes her night shirt for a long sleeved blouse with a simple, round collar. The ensemble is black on black, accented by the cream oxfords that she loves.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Before her career took off she never cared much for clothes. Now, she wears them like armor.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the mirror, she straightens out her shirt, adjusts the wireless bra underneath. She tries to pretend she can’t see her own face, the dark circles that sit deep around her eyes and the pasty grey her skin has taken to as of late. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Her hair is a neglected mess, but with a few sweeps and tugs on snowy white strands, the sleep mussed bun turns into a good enough, low sitting ponytail. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>When she exits the room, she throws a bitter glance at the staircase. She can get up pretty easily by now, but making her way down is still difficult. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Her ex wife used to say it must have been fate they ended up in this house, built in the 1920’s with a classic old school elevator as a centrepiece. It hadn’t been in working condition since the 60’s, but the design with the airy metal cage was so beautiful, they decided to keep it where it was when they renovated the house.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And after the accident, it found its purpose once more and had to be reinstalled. With new internal mechanisms and clear glass behind the original metal bars, it’s a 21’st century elevator in early 20’s packaging.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s beautiful.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro hates it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But she’s long since admitted her defeat, despite how stubborn she used to be in refusing to use an elevator when there was a perfectly fine staircase. It drove Adam crazy.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Not that Shiro can blame her.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It wasn’t easy for either of them, dealing with all the things that changed after the accident. Shiro tried for a while, not to give in to bitterness. But the pain paired with the sudden feeling of inadequacy came to be too much in the end. She was in a foul mood, all the time. Nothing made her happy anymore, and it didn’t matter how much Adam tried to help. She had fallen from the top of the world, best selling author and successful businesswoman at such a young age, always in control of herself and her life.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>To suddenly have so much of her independence and control swept away, it was too much for her to handle.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And with the acidity poisoning her, all the rest began to fall apart. She found herself with a writer's block more severe than any she had ever had. Her marriage cracked and flaked like old paint.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Now she’s divorced and hasn't put words on paper for almost four years.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The only thing that made her feel alive again, that put a soothing balm on her pain and made the rest of her burn hot in all the good ways, was Keith.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And she’s gone now, too.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro leans her forehead on the glass inside the elevator, and sighs. Part of her just wants to go back to sleep instead of staying up with her spiraling thoughts, but she’s promised herself to at least try to take a short walk before she needs to deal with all the work that has begun to pile up on her desk.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The elevator stops on the first floor with a barely noticeable tremble, and Shiro steps out into the open space of her living room. It’s huge, too big even when she didn’t occupy it alone. After growing up in a rented apartment in the city, sharing a room with her sister all throughout her childhood and then squeezing into a studio apartment in New York with Adam for three years, moving into this house had been the strangest feeling.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Honestly, it had been more Adam’s dream than it had been Shiro’s, to have a house like this. All Shiro wanted was enough space to live comfortably, and perhaps an office. But her wife had big plans, visions of a large family home outside of the city where they could live happily. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And Shiro wanted her to have anything, everything. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Things had happened so quickly, for a while there. Shiro was in her last year of college when she got the phone call, a publisher calling to say he’d read Shiro’s novel and loved it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She had never dared to dream it would be as well received as it had been. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the span of eighteen months, her first book was topping lists all over the US and Canada. They used her first paycheck to pay for the wedding, twenty three years old and high on success. They married home in Boston, a small and sweet thing. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>After that, things continued to happen for the both of them. They stayed in New York for a couple more years, Adam graduating med-school and Shiro writing night and day. By the time Adam had her medical licence in hand, the sequel to Shiro’s first book was already shipping out on the market and they had enough money in the bank to start looking for a house to make their own.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It was the week after Shiro’s twenty seventh birthday when they finally moved in. The old red brick house had been entirely ripped apart on the inside, remodeled into an airy, modern home with cool color palettes of mostly blue and grey on creamy white walls. To match the elevator standing right in their living room, they tied the interior together with accents and details of black painted metal throughout the house.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro didn’t have much to do with the design, but the place turned out absolutely beautiful. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She had thought she’d have to put up more of a fight to keep it in the divorce. But Adam didn’t want it, once it came to that.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro understands why Adam wanted to start over, though. To not linger in the ruins of something that they broke.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a point of view Shiro never fully saw, until recently. Because now, when she walks across the living room and down the hall to the main entrance, the ghost of Keith’s presence sticks to her like a shadow.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the roomy hallway, she opens the mirror doors to the closet. She goes for a thin coat, black and flowy, and a scarf. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The metal end of her cane clicks on the stone floor, like the hand of a clock counting down her steps as she reaches for the door.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>A gust of crisp October air hitting her face is the first thing when she steps out. The light sting of natural light on unadapted eyes is the second.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The third is catching sight of the abnormality sitting on her dark oiled porch. A brown paper package, about the size of her phone and maybe two inches high. She stares at it for a moment, surprised by the fact someone completely forwent the mailbox standing no more than twenty feet away in order to leave something sitting in front of her door.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Even with no one looking on, she tries to look at least somewhat graceful bending down to pick it up. She turns it over in her hand, tosses it a few inches in the air. It’s light, and unsigned. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s happened more than once over the years that fans of her books have sent her gifts, sometimes making it even to her private home. Her agent advised her not to open the ones that arrived at her home, for safety reasons. But Shiro is her own agent since a long while back, by now.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>So.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She picks at the white string tied around the little package, scanning her surroundings as if expecting to find someone crouching behind a bush.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It only takes her a few seconds to decide on what to do, leaning her cane against the railing as she begins to untie the little bow of string. The paper is damp from sitting outside, and for a brief moment she wonders how long the package has been there.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>String and paper both fall onto the deck, and Shiro holds a wooden gift box in her hands. There doesn’t seem to be anything too special about it. No engravings, nothing painted or written on the outside. Just a plain, light wood box with a silver clasp. Shiro frowns, because it feels like it’s also </span>
  <em>
    <span>empty</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She hesitates with her thumbnail caught on the clasp. Something builds and squirms in the pit of her stomach and suddenly she’s torn. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But after a moment, the box opens with a soft creak. Shiro nearly drops it, in the instant she sees the polaroid sitting at the bottom of the box.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And all she sees is red.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Nebbiolo</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Chapter 2,</p>
<p>
  <strong>Nebbiolo, <em>type: Blue</em></strong>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Named after the Italian word for fog, the Nebbiolo is a book you cannot judge by its cover. Producing brightly colored wines that appear light, and the unprepared are in for a punch at first sip.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p><br/>~*~</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Red.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Red, red lips. It’s the first thing Shiro sees when the door opens. Perfectly painted, strawberry red lips catching on a pair of abnormally sharp canines when they smile up at her and begin to shape words.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She has to remind herself it’s impolite to stare, and jerks when she catches a moment too slowly that the words spoken was her own name.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Are you Takashi Shirogane?” The owner of red, red lips repeats herself, and Shiro gives a quick nod. The voice is deep for such a petite frame, a little raspy and rough.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She’s young, much younger than Shiro had anticipated when she made this appointment. Keith Kogane came warmly recommended from a partner at Shiro’s company, and she only assumed such a person would be… nothing like this.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Charcoal black, unruly hair. Sharp features. Thin but strong bodied, moving gracefully deeper into the examination room where she guides Shiro to sit in one of two arm chairs in the corner. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro sinks into the offered seat, clutching the hilt of her cane tightly. Suddenly she’s a little nervous.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Dr Kogane grabs a folder off her desk, flipping through the pages as she slinks into the opposite chair, one jean-clad leg crossing over the other in a delightfully careless sort of way.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’re here because of pain in your right leg?” Keith doesn’t look up from her papers. “Originating from a compression fracture two years ago?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro offers an affirmative hum.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“And you’re not happy with your previous physical therapist, is that right?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“The pain is still terrible, getting worse if anything as of late.” Shiro mutters, looking down at her hands. When Dr Kogane doesn’t continue, Shiro tilts her head up to meet a neat, black eyebrow arched in question, a little smile playing on her lips.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You do know seventeen months is not a very long time to recover from an injury like yours, don’t you?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I do.” Shiro suppresses the urge to cross her arms over her chest like a petulant child. “But I reckon I should at least be getting better, not worse.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The younger woman squints at her for a second, before schooling her expression into something more open, more business.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m sensing there’s something more to it than that but I’m not that kind of therapist, so I’m just going to ignore it and take a look at your leg instead. Sound good?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That pulls a bark of laughter from Shiro, and she freezes.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>When was the last time someone really made her laugh?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She squirms in her seat, a little startled by the warmth blooming in her stomach from such a little thing. A tiny, happy glow she hasn’t felt in way too long.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro doesn’t realize she’s spaced out until Dr Kogane clears her throat. She’s standing next to her, looking down at Shiro expectantly.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m going to need you and your leg.” She says matter-of-factly, nodding in the direction of the examination table.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“- right.” Shiro huffs, embarrassed, and moves toward the table to sit.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Dr Kogane looks like she’s trying to swallow a laugh, and where that would normally piss Shiro off, all she feels is sort of… fidgety.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m also going to need you to take your pants off.” She says after a moment, and Shiro feels like slapping herself across the face.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She’s so dumb.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s always awkward getting undressed in front of strangers, but doing so when you’re already embarrassed to begin with turns out to be worse. Shiro fumbles with the hidden zipper on her slacks, forgets to take her shoes off first so they catch around her ankles. Overall, it’s mortifying, and it makes her temper flare.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Once she’s kicked her pants completely off she’s scowling and flushing red all over while the PD stands there watching all her self respect fly out the window. Shiro swears under her breath and falls back on the table, and Red, Red lips snorts.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“It’s a little unprofessional of you to laugh at my misery.” Shiro grumbles. She feels strangely out of her zone, like she left her authoritative persona at the door. It irks her.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Perks of having my own practice and answering to no one.” Dr Kogane says, moving to grab Shiro’s ankle and bend her leg slowly upwards. “I also wear jeans and paint my nails. Does this hurt?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“A little.” Shiro nods. It’s not terrible right now, but she’s basically in some level of pain every minute of the day, and moving any which way makes it worse. The PT hums, and bends Shiro’s leg back further. Shiro winces, eyes falling closed at the sharp stab of pain right above her knee. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Dr Kogane keeps bending and pressing and pulling and adjusting her leg for a couple of minutes, and she seems to attempt to make Shiro not concentrate on the pain by making an awkward attempt at small talk.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s… endearing.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“So what do you do when you’re not in a PA’s office getting yanked around like this, Takashi?” She asks after a while, and Shiro actually manages a weak smile at her choice of words.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You can call me Shiro if you want.” Shiro offers, staring at a tiny dark spot on the ceiling. “Everyone else does.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Alright, Shiro.” There’s a smile in her voice, and Shiro doesn’t dare take a look. “What is it that you do?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I own a book publishing business.” </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s not what she’d like to say, but can she call herself an author still if she hasn’t written anything for almost two years? Not without cringing.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Dr Kogane makes an oh sound, peaking Shiro’s interest. She looks down to where the PA is currently testing the reflexes in her knees. “What was that?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Nothing, just,” red lips shape into a firm line. “I think I know who led you here, is all.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro understands there’s probably some confidentiality agreement Dr Kogane has to uphold, so she doesn’t say anything in response. Even if she’s pretty sure they’re thinking about the same person.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Lotor Daibazaal can be a piece of work. Brilliant and driven, but just as much of a pain as he is an asset to Shiro’s company.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“So,” the PA starts over, and Shiro is more than willing to go with it. She’d rather not think about Lotor outside her office, anyway. “Books, huh?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s eight in the morning and Shiro is sitting in her office with a bottle of barolo. She itches to pace the room, to move, maybe fucking punch something.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But she’s frozen in place, grasping her twice emptied glass a little too hard and staring at the little photo she found in the box on her porch.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>At this desk she’s written gruesome stories, handled business affairs that made her pull her hair out. But nothing has ever phased her like this.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro can’t tell if it’s blood or lipstick or both, smeared over the set of chapped lips and sharp teeth that make up most of the image. Framed by tear streaked cheeks, flaring nostrils, Keith’s lips stretch around a pair of gloved fingers shoved deep into her mouth.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s like the photo gets worse for each time Shiro allows herself to look at it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She’s trembling, dizzy, and it has little to do with the wine. It’s hard to breathe, and there’s a loud buzzing in her head. The wooden box lies in pieces on the floor, and there’s a fresh dent in the deep blue paint on her office door. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She’s slowly beginning to realize this isn’t another one of her dreams, even if it can easily be described as a nightmare. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The writing on the bottom of the polaroid is a mockery bold and cruel enough to make Shiro break clean in two. It’s simple, just “schhh” scribbled in black marker.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>A direct reference to a message written to the main character in the first book of the series that built her career. A demand to keep a secret, not to share her knowledge with anyone.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Or terrible things will follow.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It doesn’t take a genius to know what is expected of her now. If Keith didn’t disappear because she wanted to, if someone has her-</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro sees the reference as what it is, beyond the obvious. But if she’s going to follow in the footsteps of her written character, there’s a good few hours of waiting to be done.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Hours where she’s stuck in place. And even when the time comes, this isn’t some story she conjured up on her laptop when she was twenty. It’s not a fictional woman following the clues leading to her past, no sidekick best friend or comic relief cop in training to make her story worthy of reading.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>All there is is Keith. Real, flesh and blood Keith biting down on black leather in a dark space where she doesn’t belong.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And it’s up to Shiro to figure out, how to bring her back.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The hours tick by much too slowly and Shiro is losing her mind. All she can possibly do in preparation has been done, including a thorough googling of what may need to be done to freshen up a gun that’s been sitting in a locked drawer for over ten years.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Nothing, as it turns out, because the gun has never been fired.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Just yet another thing her old agent insisted she’d keep at home after an overly enthusiastic fan went a little overboard at the beginning of her career. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She never thought she’d even think to use it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But now it’s sitting and waiting for nightfall with Shiro like some screwed up kind of companion. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She’s been staring at the drawer where she keeps it, gnawing on her bottom lip that’s dry from powerful wine, sage and ripe cherries lingering on her tongue still. She’s so lost in her head, the sudden commotion from downstairs nearly startled her out of her chair.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She hears quick feet clicking on the stone stairs, Kolivan’s raised voice calling after them. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro just barely gets out of her chair before the door handle rattles and a man in a neat, deep plum suit appears in her office. The rising panic in her screeches to a halt.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lotor’s slick grin is enough to give her a headache on a normal day. Today, the mere sight of his face makes her stomach twist.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>When his smile isn’t returned, the mask falls off his face like one of the bright leaves sailing to the ground from the tree tops outside. On some distant level, Shiro almost feels a little honored. Not just anyone gets to see this man as honest as she does.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro sinks back into her seat with practiced grace, and looks back at the man standing in her door just in time to see Kolivan appear behind him. He shoots Shiro a questioning look, and she shakes her head just barely. Kolivan takes his leave in silence, with a puffed up Lotor glaring after him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You ought to train your beast better than this, Shiro.” Lotor adjusts his tie, and Shiro wishes she could just slap him some days when his arrogance gets to his head. As if he is entitled to barge into her home unannounced, or has any right to tell her how to treat her staff.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Believe you me,” She crosses her hands on the desk and leans over it, pinning Lotor with a glare. With the movement she covers the haunting polaroid with her arm, hiding it from her unexpected guest. “If he were a guard dog you wouldn’t have made it past the porch.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He laughs, like she knew he would. They’ve been dealing with each other for years by now, and still she isn’t sure if he’s smart enough to know when to pass an insult off as a joke, or if he’s just a little dumb.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Either way, it allows her to speak her mind without getting into trouble with one of her biggest shareholders, which she’s very grateful for.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She can’t decide if what they have is a very questionable friendship, or if it’s something else entirely.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s good to see you remain your usual self.” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>”What is it you want, Lotor?” Shiro makes a point of sounding very tired, like his very existence drains her. She knows such things have little effect on Lotor Daibazaal, but she can always try.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lotor saunters deeper into her office, one long, elegant finger tracing the panel of one of the many bookshelves lining the wall.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Black gloves shoved between crimson lips flash before her vision, and she feels her blood run cold.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You haven’t been to the office in over two weeks, my friend.” Lotor speaks, but he sounds far away. Like Shiro is drifting off elsewhere, the photo burning through the silk of her sleeve. “Haven’t been returning my calls. You know I’m not.. ah, </span>
  <em>
    <span>the best of friends</span>
  </em>
  <span> with your secretary.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He picks a book from a shelf, flips through it without really looking. It’s one of Shiro’s own novels, and Lotor pauses to inspect the photo of her on the back of its cover. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She looked very different, back then. Long, black hair tied back into a ponytail. No scar across her nose, no wrinkles around the eyes.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith once pointed out there was no depth in her eyes back then, that that was the biggest difference.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“So I figured I should come see you myself.” Lotor finishes his explanation, and slips the book back into its place. And when he meets Shiro’s eyes again, he gives her a pitying look. “I understand your little spark plug walked out on you, is it so?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the type of cruel thing that tends to fall off Lotor’s tongue. But there’s a glint in his eye that has always made her feel like he isn’t truly trying to be hurtful, but more testing the give of her steely resolve. It’s a game she’s gladly let him play, simply because she knows how strong she is. It’s also great practice for the rough environment of her business, to let him test her limits. He’s never broken her yet.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But today he might just.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith has always been her weakest point, but it is also one of Lotor’s. Keith Kogane long since became a monument representing the sting of rejection that is all too rare in Lotor’s life. A beautiful, intelligent woman that he found he couldn’t charm nor persuade nor buy. And on top of it, he didn’t get to forget her either, as she came into Shiro’s life and stayed there.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s been a great pleasure to make him face one of his few failures over and over again in the past few years, if only just to bring him back to earth every once in a while.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro’s heart leaps into her throat.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Audacious thing like that, it was only a matter of time don’t you think so?” Lotor continues, seeming perfectly calm and content while Shiro fights the turmoil threatening to claim demand on her thoughts.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It wouldn’t make sense. She needs to </span>
  <em>
    <span>stop</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.” He makes himself comfortable on the plush leather couch facing Shiro’s desk, arms splayed over the backrest. “I need to talk to you about the agenda for the board election.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the first thing all day to pierce the veil of horror the little “gift” left on her porch draped over her head. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The annual election meeting for the board of representatives from her shareholders is nine weeks away, and it’s always hell. Lotor has been trying to buy out as many as possible in order to gain some more ground on the board, something Shiro is acutely aware of. She has no intention to allow Lotor to slip into the chairman’s seat or by any means claim more power within her company.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lotor is a brilliant businessman. But being so, he’s left a trail of previous concerings behind for Shiro to examine. And wherever Lotor Daibazaal has gone, he’s come out on top.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She isn’t stupid. She knows he’s trying his damndest to sneak his way into enough shares to slowly begin redirecting her business. She’s known for a long time it would happen eventually.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She just wasn’t prepared to be knocked off balance this close to the meeting, and risk losing that fight.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But right at this moment, the issue of what Lotor’s request entails isn’t actually the problem.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I swear to god, Daibazaal,”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the request, the </span>
  <em>
    <span>demand</span>
  </em>
  <span>, in itself.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“-if you don’t get your ass out of this office in the next thirty seconds, I promise you I’ll make very sure you find out just what my guard dog out there is capable of.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She barely recognizes the voice rolling off her tongue, clear and sharp like a sliver of broken glass. Shiro sees the venom register on Lotor’s features, and for a second, she wonders if he’s scared of her.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And if maybe he should be.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey now-“ he’s a little startled, tensing up in his seat.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You barge into my home, unannounced and unwelcome, because you don’t have the self control to wait until I get back to the office.” She’s seething. It's been two years since Lotor last witnessed how bad her temper can get, and she’s starting to feel like perhaps that anger is just what she needs to keep this brat in place. “I realize the concept of not getting what you want the second you want it is unfamiliar to you, but it’s about damn time you learn. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Get the fuck out of my house</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“So,” Shiro keeps her eyes on the ceiling. They’re in Doctor Kogane’s, or Keith’s, rehabilitation room today, and Shiro is currently trying to power through the pain as she lifts her leg high from a lying position on the floor. “How did you end up here? As a PT, I mean.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith, squatting next to Shiro on the floor and watching her, hums.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I had my fair share of sessions when I was younger,” Keith adjusts the position of Shiro’s hips ever so slightly, surprisingly strong fingers guiding Shiro to where she ought to be. “Turned out I had a knack for understanding how the body works, and it seemed like a fun enough job, I guess.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You were an athlete?” Shiro feels like she shouldn’t indulge in the fantasy of Keith in workout gear, but in the past three appointments they’ve had since first meeting, the younger woman has become an all too frequent guest star in Shiro’s stray thoughts and daydreams.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>But as shameful as that may be, she can’t bring herself to stop.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>There is something about Keith that brings out a side in Shiro she didn’t know she had in the first place, and Shiro wants to stuff her face with it. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Dancer.” Keith corrects, her warm palm settling on Shiro’s knee to keep her leg straight. “I started ballet when I was five.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro’s mind drifts to the framed photo of a ballerina’s silhouette sitting on the wall above Keith’s desk in her examination room. It only takes a moment to place Keith in the models stead, backlit by a single spotlight on a dark stage, the tips of her toes seeming to hardly even touch the floor as she moves as easy as grass bowing to the wind. Graceful, beautiful.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Wow.” the word slips past her teeth, verging on dazed. Hopefully, it’ll slip past Keith as something born from the pain she’s putting Shiro through with today’s exercises. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The silence between them drags itself out, stretches a little too long. But Shiro doesn’t know what to say, how to shake herself from the vision of Keith’s strong and slender limbs moving to the sound of gentle strings and piano. The image lingers in her mind like the palette of a full wine on her tongue, and it’s the most exquisite thing.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s Keith who speaks first, once she’s risen to her feet and offered a helping hand for Shiro to do the same.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“How long have you been married?” She asks, conversational and easy as any professional like her does well to learn.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It hits Shiro like a punch.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It was too easy, breaking the spell she’d let herself fall under just now. For a while there, she forgot about the band weighing heavier than it should around her finger. Forgot about everything, except a red lipped ballerina dancing just for her.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Seven years.” Shiro says, and the words are rough as gravel in her mouth. “We’ve been separated for two months now, though.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She’s not sure why she offers that information, what good it will do. Hardly anyone knows about Adam moving into a penthouse apartment in the city, because it isn’t something either of them are happy to share. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith regards her for a moment. Like she’s putting pieces together, and Shiro is the puzzle.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I see,” she says eventually. “Is that why you’re in such a hurry to get better? Has it been taking a toll on your marriage?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro huffs. A little, joyless laugh.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“With intuition like that, perhaps you should have been a PI instead.” She jokes, but it’s awkward now. There are few things she wouldn’t rather talk about than the scattered pieces of her marriage.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“And spend my days stalking trophy wives to confirm the husband’s suspicions she’s banging the gardener? I don’t think so.” Keith runs with the turn in subject, for which Shiro is grateful. But the mirage is gone. “Now let’s get you on that step stool, Shirogane.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>For the rest of their session, their small talk is sparse but comfortable. While Shiro grunts and curses through the exercises, Keith distracts her from the discomfort by telling Shiro about her job and her business. Keith is only twenty four years old, and Shiro has definitely wondered how such a young person could afford a nice establishment in a good neighborhood like this.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>But Keith explains. How she worked a year and a half or so at different hospitals and rehabilitation gyms in the area after graduation, and how she quickly learned how much she hated it. She hated the pressure and the stress, the directors, the messy environment. So she took a gamble, and bet on herself. She took a loan, and bought out a practice from a physical therapist who was retiring. She managed to keep most of the old owners clients, and worked - works - her ass off to make a good name for herself.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro considers if it’d be too weird to tell this woman she doesn’t know how incredibly brave Shiro thinks she is.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She blurts it out anyway when they’re headed back to the examination room and office, and a heat spreads in her chest when Keith turns completely quiet, a soft pink dusting her cheeks.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Back in the comfy chairs where they had their first conversation a few weeks earlier, Keith keeps her eyes focused on the file on her lap while going over the past weeks progress and instructing Shiro which exercises to do at home. It’s not supposed to be so adorable, or make Shiro feel this good, to have made the young PT a little flustered. Still, Shiro can’t help but bask in it just a little. It allows her to fantasize, and imagine that the harmless crush she’s developing for Keith isn’t completely one sided.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>When Keith finishes up transferring her notes to her computer, Shiro stays put. Her gaze strays to the photograph of the ballerina above Keith’s head, and the question rolls off her tongue like an afterthought.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Do you still dance?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith looks over her shoulder at Shiro, a puzzled expression turning into a sweet smile. “I do, actually.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’d love to see it sometime.” Words just keep escaping past Shiro’s lips, without content and definitely crossing a line by now. But Keith just arches a brow in a way Shiro doesn’t know how to interpret, and turns back to her desk.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“We’re done for today,” she changes the subject, and shuffles through some papers on her desk. Shiro mentally slaps herself for going too far and making things uncomfortable for Keith just because she can’t control her mouth. “Don’t skip the leg lifts at home. I know they’re painful but I need you to keep at it alright?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’re the boss.” Shiro says, groaning tiredly when she gets out of the chair. Keith meets her by the door and opens it, a whiff of the spicy perfume Shiro can’t seem to stop thinking about lately invading her nose when she moves past Keith to take her leave. “Thanks. I’ll see you next week?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She glances at Keith, and suddenly feels terrible. The younger woman looks hesitant, not smiling back at her with that easy confidence Shiro has always seen in her at the end of their sessions before.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yeah, next week.” Keith confirms, with a weak, uncharacteristic smile.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro doesn’t say anything else, opting for a nod goodbye just so she won’t go and make things worse. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She’s halfway through the little waiting room, when Keith says her name.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Shiro?” Keith catches up to her in two long strides. Shiro doesn’t miss it this time, the nervousness in Keith’s tone. “Since you asked about my dancing,” </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith hands over a peach flyer. Upon quick inspection, Shiro realizes it’s for a ballet performance. The date printed in a dainty font is just a couple of weeks away, and a flare of excitement rises in Shiro. She’s about to say something, that of course she’ll be there, when Keith beats her to it.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You should bring your wife!” Keith gives her an encouraging look. “Maybe date night watching an amateur ballet is just what you two need.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro rubs her temples, standing with her back to the closed office door. It’s been a little over an hour since she all but kicked Lotor out on his ass, but - not to be cliché - it feels like days. Outside, the sun has begun to set. The view outside her window is red and gold, a picture perfect sunset over shifting autumn trees. On the desk in front of her, everything she needs sits in a neat little row, waiting.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The gun in its holster. A carefully worded letter of compliance. And a stack of bills from her safe, ten thousand dollars, just as is the price her main character pays in the book.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She’s changed her clothes. Had another glass of wine. It’ll be dark soon enough.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Her fingers tremble when she hooks the holster to her belt and stuffs the money into an envelope with the letter. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>A dark wool coat falls heavy over her shoulders minutes later, and she tucks the envelope into the hidden pocket in the lining. The front door appears daunting, suddenly, and the thought makes Shiro snort.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Few things piss her off as much as being bossed around. It’s like a snare around her neck, and apparently her sense of pride doesn’t entirely care what the circumstances are. There’s no space for it, no way for her to keep her head held high. It feels a lot like having the rug pulled out from under her. Again.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Beyond the barrier of lacquered wood and glass, the air is damp and heavy with the drizzle of rain that reflects the glow from the porch light. Stepping off the porch, cool water hits her face, and a stone drops to the bottom of her stomach. She thinks of Keith, knuckles whitening around the knob on her cane. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Glossy pebbles shatter the curtain of rain when she kicks the gravel with a rough yell. It’s a futile attempt to shake some of the anger, horror, and worry that make her bones feel like they’re filled with lead. They don’t budge, and by the time she’s slipping into the driver's seat of her Mercedes all the questions she’s spent all day trying not to ask are drowning out everything else.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Were there signs?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Should she have known sooner?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>What is going to happen to Keith?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>What has </span>
  <em>
    <span>already</span>
  </em>
  <span> happened?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Who?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Why</span>
  </em>
  <span>?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The engine comes to life with a purr, and Shiro’s barely aware she’s driving.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Her mind is buzzing and whirring like a wasp nest with words of guilt and terror and heartbreak. But right at the center of her mind, like an animal sitting in the eye of the storm, is the one thing she’s very sure of. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>For this, there will be hell to pay.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>ooooupsie</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Pinot Noir</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Chapter 3,</span>
</p><p>
  <strong>Pinot Noir, type: blue</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A true wine world chameleon, the pinot noir is versatile as few others. The flavour profile isn’t rich, and as a young wine you’ll find it to be tart and light. But give it time, and the Pinot Noir will surprise you with its development from unripe cherries to late summer blueberries and oak. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A small body with flavours of a rich, mature red wine is a feat in its own right; but you will also find this blue grape crossing into green grape territory by playing a significant role in the making of white, sparkling wines all over the globe. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>~*~<br/><br/></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Watching Keith dance is like nothing Shiro has ever experienced. Every twist and bend, graceful and natural. It’s like seeing a time lapse of a flower turning with the sun, swaying in the wind, blooming and closing with the turn from light to dark. It’s the kind of beautiful Shiro’s only ever seen in nature, in wild animals, birds skirting through the trees.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro feels it in her bones, that light and pull that comes with watching something surreal and beautiful. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There are at least five other people on stage with Keith for the first part, but Shiro hardly registers their presence. All she can focus on is lithe, nimble limbs in skin tight, silky clothing, twisting and turning with a powerful classical melody. Raven hair tied into a neat bun, flawless and glossy.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Red, red lips.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There’s a story being told within the dance, in the rise and fall of strings and drums. Her knowledge of ballet, and dance in general, is extremely limited, but perhaps this is how it goes. Another layer to the beauty of the dance, storytelling without words. It’s a little hard for Shiro to follow, but that may as well be because she’s really only watching one character.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But the baseline is simple. A villain, heroes. Hidden love, disaster, sorrow.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s a dark piece, which is not what Shiro expected, from the delicate pastel of the flyer, and her own assumptions. She came here low key expecting pink tulle, paper swans. A little foolish, probably. But she’s glad she was foolish, because it has made the reality all that much more surprising.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith is one half of the lovers, a heroine fighting for what remains of a man she loves, living somewhere within the villain. She meets him in secret, attempting to try and turn him back to what he was. But she underestimates his grasp on her, and darkness fights to drag her along.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro can’t stop staring, entranced by the way Keith and her counterpart move together like feathers whirling in the wind one second, like warriors in battle in the next. It’s moving, and powerful, and it leaves her breathless. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The scene ends with Keith just barely escaping darkness, fleeing the stage. When she’s gone, Shiro blinks, gaze caught on the spot where Keith disappeared.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Further down the line, darkness consumes Keith’s character after all, and it’s the tragic twist on an otherwise happy ending. When the heroes win, and the man Keith loved is gone, everything is lost to her. She pummels to her death, void of light and love to keep her going.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There are teary eyes in the audience. Shiro knows this, because despite not having cried a single time since the accident, not even from pain, she finds herself wiping salty lines off her face by the end. A warm hand touches her shoulder, gives it a light squeeze. Shiro offers a little smile to the woman beside her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For a second, she wonders if Adam would have commented on Shiro’s tears, if she were here.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But the thought passes as quickly as it comes, as applause and cheers fill the run down theatre, and swallows everything that isn’t dance, music, or Keith.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s awkward. Definitely awkward. After years of being the center of attention at social gatherings, hanging back and blending in all by herself is a little… foreign. At the very least, she’s always had Adam to keep her company. Attending an arts and culture event alone is uncharted territory.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s unexpectedly thrilling.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But mostly it feels awkward, because she really has no idea how these things work. Or if she even should be doing it in the first place. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Most of the audience are filing towards the exits by now, but a handful of people stay put. Shiro is standing close to the entrance, and really she’s considering just following the crowd and ducking out. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>In the past weeks, sessions with Keith have been different, and the highlights of her week. From the very start, Keith made Shiro feel things she forgot she could. There was no denying that, or the highly inappropriate crush that grew from it. Shiro drank it all up, reveling in the warm and silly things Keith makes her feel. She knows it’s not fair, to Adam or to anyone. But after all this time feeling nothing but bitterness, pain and anger, Shiro hasn't been able to will herself to back away from the young woman who makes all of that fade away.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It might be wishful thinking, but lately, Shiro’s been getting the impression perhaps Keith might feel something similar. It’s there in the little things. Touches lingering a little longer than they probably should. An openness between them that isn’t one between a doctor and a patient. It’s more than that.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And Shiro finds herself giving in to greed. Which is why she’s here, lingering with the friends and family after the performance she was supposed to take her wife to, just to get another look at Keith outside the office.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A few minutes pass during which nothing whatsoever seems to happen, and it has Shiro glancing at the exit more than once. But before she can make the decision to bail and just praise Keith in the privacy of Keith’s workspace, there’s a murmur from behind the curtain. Everyone remaining in the theater shuffle to their feet, and one by one, the dancers slip out and off the stage to meet their loved ones.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith is among the last to pop out, changed into black jeans and a t-shirt, a bag slung across her shoulder. Shiro gravitates towards her before she has time to think, slowly making her way down the stairs lining the rows of seats. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith hasn’t spotted her, yet, and suddenly Shiro feels giddy, bubbly with excitement to surprise Keith here.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She’s about half way when a big man in a yellow sweatshirt blocks Keith from her view. Shiro watches him dip down and lift Keith off the floor in a tight hug that takes Keith a few moments to reciprocate. Another young man pats her on the arm where she hangs a good few inches off the ground, saying something.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro stops at a good distance, waiting for who she can only assume are Keith’s friends to finish their round of praise.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They seem close, comfortable and easy around each other as the two men ramble on and shove a bouquet of mixed flowers in Keith’s arms once she’s back on her own feet. She’s grinning proudly, cheeks dusted pink. It’s a side of Keith Shiro has never seen. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s the most amazing thing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro is staring, definitely staring, just soaking up all these new versions of Keith she’s witnessed so far this afternoon.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And it’s like Keith can sense the eyes on her, because suddenly she’s looking straight at Shiro, red lips falling open ever so slightly in surprise. Then she smiles, a genuine and welcoming quirk of lips, flash of teeth.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro offers a lame little wave in response, and hurries down the rest of the stairs.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Shiro!” Keith greets her happily, but Shiro falls short. Up close, Keith looks like something from a fairytale. Her hair is still tied up without a single hair out of place, and her flawless makeup shimmers in the low light. Cheekbones dusted in black glitter, heavy eyeliner, fake lashes. It’s a far stretch from the everyday-Keith she’s used to. “You made it.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro nods, taking a moment before she can shake herself. “I- yeah, I did.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There’s something in Keith’s gaze then, when she looks around for two seconds before darting back to look Shiro in the eye.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Just you?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She’s not imagining it. There’s something pleased in the way Keith asks, like the telltale purr of a happy cat. It’s enough to send Shiro’s mind spinning.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You were incredible.” Shiro lands on saying, deciding there’s no reason to dive into conversation about why Adam isn’t with her. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No? Famous author and all, I figured you’d be well versed in the arts.” Keith teases, a smirk playing on her lips that has no business being so attractive.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’re severely mistaken.” Shiro tuts, trying to match Keith’s playful tone without completely messing it up with her nerves. “All I do is sit around and read.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith snickers, and is about to say something else, when someone clears their throat behind her. Shiro looks up at the two men, who she had completely blocked out.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Rude.” The slimmer of the two pokes Keith in the head. “Introduce us!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith drops her smile, turning to look over her shoulder with an arched brow. “You’re still here?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It earns her another hard poke in the temple, and she cracks into silent laughter. What can only be described as a squabble ensues, the two jabbing at each other both verbally and physically. Shiro blinks in surprise, a little dumbfounded. She has no idea when she last spent time around people who don’t appear to have a stick up their ass. Herself included, probably. It’s been a long while since she did anything even remotely fun. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When the two don’t stop, the second man leans into Shiro’s field of vision with a friendly wave.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Sorry about those two.” the guy jabs a thumb in Keith and the other man’s direction just as Keith groans, caught in a headlock. “I’m Hunk. The man-child over there is Lance.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Shiro.” She offers a hand for Hunk to shake. He seems nice, warm.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Great to meet you!” Hunk beams at her, and turns to stand beside her and watch the spectacle of Keith and Lance finally starting to calm down. “So how do you know Keith?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Oh, uhm,” Shiro glances at Hunk. “I’m a patient of hers.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Ah, figures.” Hunk hums, reaching out to catch the sleeve of Lance’s shirt when he tries to dart past them. “Our girl doesn’t make a lot of friends, yanno. It’s good to see she’s branching out a little.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Gee, thanks.” Keith mutters, crossing her arms over her chest and elbowing Lance lightly in the ribs as she does so. There’s a wheeze of ‘Did I mention the best part was when you died?’, and she smirks. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“We’re actually taking Keith out to dinner, if you’d like to join us, Shiro?” Hunk peers at him, friendly and open. It throws Shiro for a loop.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Of course she wants to come!” Lance blurts out, sliding up next to Hunk and into his space. Shiro sees the easy way they lean into each other, and realizes they’re probably not just friends. It looks… really nice. “Who wouldn’t want to hang out with us?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro has no idea what to do with herself, turning with a helpless expression to look at Keith. Her neck and ears are red, and she’s looking back at Shiro with wide eyes.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Don’t listen to him, you don’t have to come-”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’d like to,” Shiro interrupts Keith mid-sentence, giving her a soft smile. “If you want me to.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>--</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“It’s post performance tradition,” Lance speaks through a mouth full of bread and cheese. They’re at a tiny pizza place, cheap and simple. Nothing fancy.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro feels a bit out of place. And overdressed. But other than that, it’s great. Keith’s friends are welcoming and fun to be around, and the atmosphere is open in a way Shiro isn’t used to. She realizes she’s missed it, this easy company and socializing with people who aren’t wearing Armani, doesn’t care about status, or tries to rope her into investments. Next to her in the worn little booth, Keith practically inhales her pizza, and tells them how she didn’t have time to eat anything during rehearsals earlier.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hence the tradition.” Hunk says with a roll of his eyes. Lance nods quickly in agreement, cheeks bulging. “It’s the same thing every time.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith doesn’t object.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Have you known each other long?” Shiro asks, looking mostly at Hunk who seems to be the only one not looking like a choking hazard.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“We were roommates in college.” He explains, looking at the two others with a tender smile. “There were like ten of us in one apartment, and Keith was the only girl.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Those were some good times.” Lance says dreamily, popping an olive in his mouth. “Watching Mullet fight off horny boys for a year.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Including you, you clown.” Hunk bumps Lance with his shoulder. Lance cringes, and turns to say something to his boyfriend, but Shiro doesn’t listen. Instead she turns to Keith, who looks just about done with life.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Mullet?” It’s a tease as much as it is a question. Keith leans back in her seat and wipes grease from the corners of her mouth with her thumb. It’s inelegant and careless, and something about that makes it that much hotter. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Let’s just say I had a questionable haircut when I first met these guys.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro laughs, so much that Keith breaks and starts to giggle. It’s a sweet sound, a perfect sound.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro’s grateful for her own lack of patience when it comes to finding a parking space in the city, because she got a ride from Kolivan instead of taking her car. Which means that an hour later, when dinner turns into drinks at the irish bar across the street, she doesn’t have to think twice.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Conversation flows, and a beer and a half in, Shiro’s awkwardness has given way. It doesn’t feel like spending time with strangers, anymore. It feels like they’re friends.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro never had many friends in her life. She met Adam when they were ten, and there was rarely anyone else who stuck around for long. Some friends that were never quite friends during high school and college. But she can’t remember it ever being this much fun.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They’re tipsy, and loud, crowding a small table meant for two in the back corner of the place. Shiro listens to and laughs at the many stories Lance and Hunk have to share, reveling in how some of them make Keith flame red and hide her face in her arms crossed on the table.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When Lance finishes an especially embarrassing retelling of college Keith getting caught sexting in class by her professor, Shiro puts a comforting hand between her shoulder blades and gives Keith a pat. There’s no missing the shiver that racks Keith’s frame at the touch.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro burns. And doesn’t move her hand away until Keith eventually moves away, muttering something about needing to pee. Shiro watches her as she goes, the way her slim hips sway. Keith’s body heat lingers at the tips of her fingers, and she closes her fist as if to preserve the sensation. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She’s in dangerous territory, Shiro knows that. If she’s been deluding herself, and read things wrong all along, she might already be in too deep to get out smoothly. Not to mention the pair of rings on the hand she keeps hiding under the table as best as she can.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That fact alone is reason enough to argue she shouldn’t be here at all.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But Shiro hasn’t spoken to Adam in over a week. Hasn’t seen her in nearly a month. The separation was supposed to allow them to gain some perspective, and Shiro knows she was supposed to realize how empty life without her wife is. Supposed to urge her to work on her issues and save their marriage.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s not going according to plan.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After twenty five years of knowing someone, it should be harder. Twenty years has come and gone since that first, tentative kiss in Adam’s childhood bedroom, seven since they married. To not have that closeness anymore, it should be harder. Stranger. But it’s not, and that more than anything else, is what makes Shiro feel guilty.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro looks at Hunk and Lance, studies them for a minute as they laugh and whisper, affectionate and young. It hits her how sad she must look, a woman in her mid thirties, tagging along and pretending to be one of the young ones. She, in her fitted pencil dress and expensive shoes and a fucking walking cane, sticks out like a sore thumb next to the other two at the table.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Even if she wasn’t still married. Even if Keith does want her the same way she wants Keith. She still shouldn’t be here. She’s a solid eleven years older than Keith. Lives in a world lightyears away from this easy going, normal world.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The chair scrapes too loud against the floor when she stands, catching the boy’s attention.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“It was great to meet you guys.” She says, and it hurts a little how her smile isn’t as true as it would have been a few minutes ago.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’re leaving?” Lance half yells, leaning over the table.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro nods, and it’s a bit like walking away from a puppy with the way Lance looks at her when she bids them goodbye.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She stops halfway through the venue, torn. She should catch Keith and say goodbye, it would be impolite not to. But she also knows that there’s a good chance a single look at that gorgeous face might be enough for Shiro’s intoxicated brain to change her mind.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her feet carry her to the exit, and she knows it’s the smartest thing to do. She’s sure of it. Kind of.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But one step on the concrete outside, and she runs into Keith heading back in.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith takes a step back from the door, something dark flashing across her face before she schools her expression. She looks at Shiro, but it’s not the same as earlier. She’s guarded now, impersonal. A long moment passes where neither of them speak, and Shiro hates it. But it’s Keith who breaks the silence.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You were going to bail without saying goodbye?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her voice is strangely small, unfitting.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Keith--” Shiro has no idea what she’s going to say, how she’s supposed to explain. The words crumble on her tongue, and she looks at Keith like her drooping shoulders and apologetic eyes can say what she can’t.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Whatever Keith reads in her, it’s enough to make her move. Shiro braces have Keith shove her out of the way and stalk back into the bar.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She doesn’t expect Keith to hook her fingers in the square neckline on Shiro’s dress, to pull her down with a forceful jerk and crash cherry red lips to Shiro’s open ones.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It takes a second to register, a prolonged moment of Shiro standing frozen with Keith’s demanding mouth on hers before the cord snaps and Shiro surges to meet the firecest kiss she’s probably ever experienced.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith’s free hand curls around her neck, holding Shiro steady as a hot tongue presses past her teeth. It’s dazing, and exhilarating, kissing Keith. That mouth Shiro’s spent far too long staring at is warm and wet, tasting of the black russian Keith’s been nursing. Shiro eats it up, licks the sweetness of Kahlua from Keith’s lips, tastes her tongue. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A tiny gasp passes from Keith’s mouth for Shiro to swallow when her hands splay out over Keith’s sides and pulls her closer, thumbs digging into Keith’s ribs as her cane clatters to the pavement beneath their feet.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The air outside is chilly, but they are scorching. Keith is small but powerful in her hands, spine arching into Shiro’s body that towers over her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For a good while, Shiro forgets why she was leaving in the first place. This is what she wants, and Keith-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Reality starts to prick like needles in her mind, breaking the spell. Still, it takes herculean strength, only to break the kiss and take a single step back. And it’s a shame, how the vision of Keith - with heavy eyelids, flushed cheeks, lipstick smudged at the edges of her perfect mouth - is ruined by the confusion in her eyes when Shiro suddenly pulls away.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“This is a bad idea,“ she starts, turning her face away. She’s got her half baked apology right at the seam of her mouth, hands retreating from their place at Keith’s sides.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But a strong pair of hands curl around her wrists, slim fingers pale on Shiro’s skin, nails painted a metallic black. All her words go up in smoke. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Do you want Adam to come back?” Keith says after a moment's pause. Her voice doesn’t waver. When Shiro remains as she is, silent, frozen in place, Keith jostles her by the wrists. Shakes the ice so that it will break. “Look at me.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro draws for a long breath. She should twist out of Keith’s hold, leave like she was supposed to. But despite the grip not even being all that strong, it feels like Keith has got her bound. Like moving away now wouldn’t be possible if she tried.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Because she doesn’t really want to leave.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And she’s helpless against the force that makes her want to give Keith whatever she asks for. The constant pull she’s felt whenever Keith’s around, ever since that first day. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When Shiro meets them, Keith’s eyes are open, honest. Vulnerable. No barriers. Fantastic, electric blue.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Do you want to give your marriage another chance?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They’re a collection of words Shiro has been avoiding to put together, for a long while. Questions she hasn’t asked herself because what she might answer has been too much for her to handle. No one’s been bold enough to ask them, either, straight forward and demanding answers.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No,” It’s a whisper, but it rages like a storm in Shiro’s head. She never allowed herself to think it, to give in to reality by putting it into words before. But when it comes, the answer is true, and she’s not quite sure what to do with all the things that fact implies. “I don’t want to go back.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s not entirely an answer to Keith’s questions, but to a much bigger one. Does she want things to go back to what they were before?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And she doesn’t.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Have you told her?” Keith remains so collected, so calm. Shiro feels like a complete wreckage under her steady gaze. Shiro shakes her head.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No, but I think-“ everything is coming crashing down, all the things she blocked out since Adam walked out. Words, actions. Things that were there, and things that weren’t, all at once. “I think she’s known, for a while.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Then what’s so bad?” Keith squeezes Shiro’s wrists in her hands. “Moving on isn’t wrong of you, Shiro.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She looks at Keith’s face, traces the lines and curves and shadows, and wishes she would just understand. Keith is so young, and so free where Shiro is not.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I can’t drag you into my mess,” Shiro tugs, urges Keith to let her go. She does, then, and part of Shiro really wishes that she hadn’t. But Keith allows her the space she asks for, waiting. “I’m thirty six with a bad leg and an oncoming divorce. All I ever do is work. I don’t have anything to offer you, Keith, you should-“</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“If you say I should find someone my own age I’m revoking all your rights as an author on the grounds of being too cliche.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A smile she can’t resist cracks on Shiro’s face, the joke catching her off guard. But Keith looks at her seriously, steady hands coming up to touch Shiro’s face.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Is that how you see yourself?” She asks, and it’s not fair how someone so fierce can also sound so tender. Keith must read the answer on her face, because she scowls, and rises to her tiptoes as she guides Shiro’s head down to her level. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’ll tell you who you are.” She tucks a strand of pearly white hair behind Shiro’s ear. “You’re a successful woman with a tough shell. You’re intelligent, and want things done a certain way. You’d do everything yourself if you could.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The words don’t exactly help Keith’s case. Shiro averts her gaze, Keith turns her back with a gentle hold on her chin.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’re also creative, and kind. You’re unconceited, and feel everything deeply. When something wows you, you light up like a damn Christmas tree and it’s all over your face.” Keith grins, sweet at first, then teasing. “You can’t be subtle to save your life.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A soundless laugh escapes her, and she sees the flare of pride on Keith’s face when she does. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’re sexy as hell,” Keith continues like it’s no big deal, like Shiro doesn’t stutter and flame red. She moves closer into Shiro’s space, arms looping around her neck, their noses aligning. “You’re all I think about.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
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</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chardonnay</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>the porn didn't fit, but it exists.  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26586304">HERE!!</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Chapter 4,<br/>
<strong>Chardonnay, type: green</strong></span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The two faced grape. A name familiar on most tongues, but a great divide in terms of impression. Such a common, ordinary grape, many never learn both sides of the coin. There’s Chardonnay; oaked and buttery, tropical fruit. Flavor flowing in from Burgougne and Napa Valley. A classic, commonly known type of wine. But then there’s Chardonnay; crisp and light. Citrus and green fruit, minerals. Born in places like Chablis and Queensland. A complete opposite, as is the case for multiple grapes. Difference is, most of us associate Chardonnay with the honey yellow Californian classics, and never know that Chablis, the gem of tart and refreshing, is in fact also Chardonnay.</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
~*~<br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Wet leaves squelch under her feet, make the dirt path slippery. It’s lined with glinting puddles that dull the lines of what is ground and what is sky in the badly lit park, now that the rain has stopped. Shiro’s so tightly strung, if some poor dog walker crosses her path she’ll probably jump out of her skin. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She tries to breathe.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In her novel, the main character discovers that the deaths of her parents didn’t go as the official police file said. Looking to find the truth about her past, she gets in a lot of trouble. When the material she’s gathered is stolen, she has to buy them back from whomever stole it. The price is ten thousand dollars, as well as her silence when it comes to a part of the story that’s been uncovered. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She agrees to the terms, and gets her research back, minus what regards the aforementioned part.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s a cruel way to hurt her, using her own writing against her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She can’t be sure she’s even doing it right, as the instructions from her fictional blackmailer were quite upfront and clear, where this is vague as can be. All she can really do is assume, and hope, that she’s expected to follow the same instructions that she wrote over fifteen years ago.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After darkness falls, find a public but empty place. Hide the money away somewhere no passerby will see. Wait ten minutes, then leave without looking back.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This park is sparse with people even during the day, outside the city but not too far away from a suburban area. It’s a place she frequented, when they just moved to the house and she went outdoors to write.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s been a long while since she last set foot on this path, now.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In the centre of the lot, where the path cuts through the open plane of grass, there’s a couple of benches. Between them, a trashcan. And maybe it’s a little out of spite, she chooses to hide the package there. Tucked away under some candy wrappers and paper cups, she leaves the envelope to be found later.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She sits down on one of the benches, and begins to count the minutes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It takes only seconds for uninvited thoughts to make her head hurt. Last time she was here, Keith was with her. They were taking a walk, one of the longer ones Shiro has managed since the accident. Keith had tripped over a dog’s leash, and ended up in a pile on the ground with a massive husky. The dog had been delighted that someone wanted to play fight, and the owner had laughed and said Shiro might never get her friend back. Keith screeched and laughed as the dog licked her face and refused to be moved off her. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro can almost hear the echo of her hearty laugh, the memory clear as day.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She squeezes her eyes shut, fighting back tears. If she can’t get Keith back safely, she doesn’t know what she’ll do. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>--</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro’s out of the car and through the front door in a flash after pulling up on her driveway and finding a car too many on the lot. She rushes into the open living room, and finds it gaping empty. But she hears it, the clatter, before the smell of food hits her nose.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Down the hall, past the dining room, standing in her kitchen like she belongs there-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Where were you?” the woman in Shiro’s kitchen points to her with the fork in her hand. “I was beginning to think you’d run out on me here.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro gapes, dumbstruck. With the chaos and agony raging in her mind all day, the scene before her is anticlimactic, to say the least.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her sister narrows her eyes at her, and then sighs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You forgot I was coming didn’t you?” Kuri accuses, with a hint of a teasing smile. “I can’t believe you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro leans against the doorframe, suddenly too all over the place to support herself. With everything that went down today, she completely forgot. Not once did it cross her mind that her sister said she’d come by after work for a late dinner, which is her excuse to check in on Shiro.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She feels faint.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Are you alright? Shiro?” Her twin sister scrambles to her side, slinging Shiro’s arm over her shoulders and moving them towards the table. “C’mon dummy. Did you eat today?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro grunts in response, and it earns her a light slap on the arm. Kuri helps her slide into the same chair where she started her morning, and looks at her with an expression that is far too much like their mother’s.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I know shit really sucks right now,” she says, stroking Shiro’s shoulder. Shiro’s suddenly aware of the warm coat she’s still wearing, and the gun strapped to her lower back under it. “But you have to take care of yourself, alright? Or I will crash here and force feed you three times a day, I swear it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro gives the hand on her shoulder a slow pat, and mumbles her thanks. When they were kids, Shiro was always the one taking care of Kuri, protecting her and making sure she didn’t hurt herself. Now the tables seem to have turned.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kuri gives her a soft smile, and returns to behind the kitchen island. The rustle of paper takeout bags, and the familiar smell of spice and warm bread, sets deep in her stomach where it echoes empty. She didn’t eat today, not since the crackers at breakfast. Not counting the bottle of Barolo.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You didn’t answer your phone so I got you palak paneer and a garlic naan. Do you want some salad?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s a fizz of a bottle being opened, liquid sloshing into glasses.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sounds great.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>--</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Shiro leaves the gun in a shoe box in the hallway closet, and thanks her lucky stars her sister didn’t show up before she left for the park.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They make it through dinner without too much trouble, Kuri doing most of the talking and poking Shiro when she catches her mind drifting. It’s fine, nice even to have someone to help her pass the time.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She hasn’t always been the greatest sister. Over protective and never offering up much of herself or her feelings. She likes to think she’s gotten better, though. Mostly because Kuri worked so hard to make it happen. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After dinner is over and done with, Kuri sticks her head into the wine cooler.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re the expert Shiro,” she says, a sly edge to her voice. “What in here goes best with sisterly conversation?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro snorts, stopping in the doorway on her way out to the living room.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“There’s an argentinian cabernet franc on the top shelf that should do just fine.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s a long pause, with only the barely there sound of bottles sliding back and forth.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Gran Enemigo?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That’s the one.” Shiro confirms, and leaves her sister to it. She walks down the hall into the living room, and collapses onto one the plush couches there. The pain in her leg is spiking again, impossible to ignore now that all major distractions are gone and all she can really do is sit around and wait. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She slips a forth vicodin of the day past her lips and swallows it dry.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>For a long while, she’s had a much better grip on her pain. Keith’s knowledge and stubbornness to keep Shiro on a tight regimen worked for her, but since Keith walked out the door Shiro has forgone her training completely.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Punishment by self harm, perhaps.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It takes a minute or so before Kuri joins her, glasses and the wine bottle in her hands. Shiro is still a little impressed, seeing her sister also bringing the fast decanter without being reminded to. She always used to moan and sigh about Shiro being too much of a snob when it comes to wine, insisting she didn’t notice any difference between a just opened and a decanted wine anyway.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It took a while to teach her otherwise, and a compromise on Shiro’s side in the shape of purchasing a fast decanter bottle topper to speed up the process. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’ll admit, getting mellowed tannins seconds after opening the bottle is nothing short of revolutionary.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So,” Kuri settles next to her, setting up the decanter and letting it do its magic. They both watch the purplish liquid pour from the slim nozzle into the glass, seeing it pill up slowly. It’s strangely mesmerizing, every time. “Are you going to tell me how you’re doing or will I need to beat it out of you?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro doesn’t say anything, suppresses the urge to curl in on herself. What is she supposed to say? It would have been hard yesterday, before all of this happened. Now? Impossible. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kuri nudges her with her elbow. “Hey. Talk to me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She switches the glasses, and hands Shiro the one filled. Shiro cups it in both of her hands, sees the sloshing liquid start to settle. She itches to down the whole thing in one gulp.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I know you’re hurting,” Kuri scoots closer, leans into Shiro’s space to rest her head on Shiro’s. “-but you’ve barely left the house for over two weeks. You need to let someone in so we can help you get back on your feet.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It crashes over Shiro like a tidal wave, the wish to let the words pour and tell her sister everything. To just have one person who can try to help and understand, share the horrible thing sitting at the pit of her stomach.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her shoulders start to shake.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh, Shiro.” Kuri mumbles, stretching to turn the decanter off so her glass won’t overflow before curling around Shiro, holding her, dropping soothing kisses in her hair. She doesn’t say anything more, letting Shiro take her time as she breaks into quiet sobs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro has no idea for how long it goes on, how long she just sits there crying with her sister wrapped like an octopus around her just like when they were little. But eventually the fog finally begins to fade.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You know Keith always thought you hated her.” Shiro grumbles, voice thick from crying. Next to her, Kuri snickers.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m your twin sister. If your girlfriend wasn’t at least a little afraid of me I’d be doing something wrong.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro shoves at her sister lightly, making her giggle. Shiro tries to relax, to tap into her sister's uncomplicated mood.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I just don’t know what the hell to do, Kuro.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The words just tumble off her tongue, she doesn’t think. But she realizes they’re alright to say, that she can seek her sister's support even if it’s not on the exact subject Kuri thinks it is.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I hate feeling this powerless.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kuri reaches for her wine, and Shiro takes a big sip of hers.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Some things are just out of our control.” Kuri swivels the wine in her glass. “When people choose to leave, that’s not up to us. It blows and it hurts, but it’s the way things are. It doesn’t mean you should stop living.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro swallows the follow up questions sitting in her throat.</span>
  <em>
    <span> What if they don’t choose to leave? What do we do when someone takes them?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I just wish I knew if she’s okay.” if she’s hurt, if she knows Shiro is trying to get her back.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“She’s a tough nut.” Kuri reassures her, running her fingers through Shiro’s hair. “I’m sure Keith’s fine.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro sighs, nudging Kuri off her so that she can lean forward. The movement makes pain shoot through her thigh and up her spine like a bolt of lightning, making her entire body spasm. It courses through her bones like wildfire, and she doubles over. Somewhere, she’s vaguely aware of the crash of glass breaking on the stone floor, of Kuri’s voice, of red pooling at her feet.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She gasps for breath, hears the thunder of her heartbeat slowly fading as the pain eases. The world around her comes back slowly, furniture and clothes alike splattered in wine. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It can’t have been more than seconds, but she’s worn to the bone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She falls back onto the couch again, sweat pearling at her brow. Keith told her long ago, that the tension in her muscles caused by stress might be playing a serious part in the cause of her pain. Shiro believed it then, because with Keith around her stress has never been so low, and her pain never so mild. She also believes it now.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>At her feet, Kuri is crouched on the floor picking up shards of broken glass. She sets the collected pieces on the coffee table, hands stained red.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It takes her a moment to notice, but it’s not the dark, cool hue of the Gran Enemigo spilling between her sister’s fingers.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Shit-” Shiro’s movements are sluggish, but she gets a hold of Kuri’s wrist. “You’re bleeding.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>--</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Fuck-” Keith spits when the empty plate collides with the floor. She looks at Shiro with a sheepish smile, shrugs. “Sorry?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro couldn’t care less about the plate.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s the first time Keith’s been to the house, one week since the ballet recital. Six days since she broke it to her oldest friend their marriage is over.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Adam had taken it well, all things considered. Had suspected, if not known, if it was going to work out, it would have already.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro left Adam’s condo with a heart that couldn’t decide if it was heavy or light, and it was all a big blur. She took a day off work Monday, cleared her head. And even if nothing had really changed all that much, waking up in her empty bed that day was not the greatest feeling.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She took a few days to herself. Went about her routine, all week. Except she cancelled her two weekly appointments with Keith. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After a few days, it was like a weight lifted. It sunk in that she didn’t dread checking her private cell, or tortured herself between meetings for being too uninvested in her marriage anymore.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Come Friday, she called Keith.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They met up at noon the following day, at a bistro Keith swore on her life Shiro would love.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She wasn’t wrong.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was dreamy, if anything, sitting at a little table by the window and see the sunlight catch on Keith’s long hair when she shifted in her seat. Having lunch together, no more walls in between.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro learned that Keith always eats like she’s starving, and that italian cuisine ticks all her boxes. She saw how those impossibly blue eyes widened in unadulterated excitement when a serving of tiramisu half the size of her head landed in front of her on the table. She noticed the way Keith glanced curiously at her over the rim of her coffee cup when Shiro spoke about her work. Shiro also learned that when it came to her life before moving to Boston, Keith was quick to steer off the subject. That is something Shiro can relate to. She hardly jumps at the opportunity to talk about her accident.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Parting afterwards didn’t seem right, and they ended up strolling around the block for as long as Shiro’s leg would allow.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Then Shiro remembered Keith mentioning she had a weakness for cars, motorcycles, anything that’ll go fast. And she tossed Keith the keys to the Mercedes.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith drove with the precision and grace of a professional, through the city and out in the open road at Shiro’s instruction.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith laughed wildly, caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she sped up on a straight stretch of road, pushing her limits.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro had refused to let her love for driving take too much of a hit after the accident. She’d bought her dream car, had Adam drive her somewhere every single day until she could do it herself again.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was before they realized her leg would not get much better. Before everything turned sour.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But even before all that, she’d never seen the car bring so much joy to the person behind the wheel. Keith was practically sparkling, and Shiro couldn’t look away.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>At the end of their joyride, they found themselves here. In an old house by a small lake. In Shiro’s home. It was a new kind of thrill, really, seeing Keith kick her shoes off and sink into the couch like she belonged there.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Conversation kept flowing freely, easily. They covered pet peeves, political views, favorite movie snacks. Keith made her laugh in a way no one has for a long, long time, and suddenly enough time had passed for both their bellies to start to rumble again.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Asking Keith to stay for dinner was hardly even a question, but more like a natural extension.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro had already come clean about her complete lack of cooking talent, and it turned out Keith is about as disastrous in front of a stove as she is. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They made it work, though.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They set up dinner in the dining room, bizarrely big for two people. But with the large windows overlooking the glinting lake, the dark colors of the room, flickering light from candles that haven’t been lit for at least a year, the spacious room seemed intimate.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>So, when the first kiss of the entire day finally happened, perhaps they got carried away.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Which is how Keith ended up elbowing an empty dinner plate to the floor.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Don’t worry about it.” Shiro says, grinning at Keith as they both bend to pick up the pieces. “Just try to control yourself, why don’t you?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith flicks her on the forehead, waving a shard of porcelain at her. “Shut up. At least tell me I didn’t break some super expensive plate?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro giggles, collecting the broken plate in a napkin. Keith doesn’t sound like she’d actually feel worse if that were the case.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hell if I know.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s already been established that Shiro wasn’t terribly invested in the home building process. Keith snorts.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Is there anything in this house you cared enough to have an opinion on?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Sure,” Shiro tries to sound offended. “My office. And the wine cellar. Adam didn’t get to say much at all about that one, I’ll have you know.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You have a wine cellar?” Keith looks at her like she can’t decide if she’s impressed or not.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro hums, straightening up in her seat and dumping the shattered porcelain on her own plate. “A big one. Regulated humidity and temperature, stone walls.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Nerd.” Keith smirks, standing up and offering Shiro her hand. “C’mon. I’m not risking breaking any more of your fancy china.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Halfway down the hall, Keith looks over her shoulder at Shiro, trailing after her with their fingers intertwined. “The wine cellar sounds very cool, by the way.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You called me a nerd thirty seconds ago.” Shiro tugs playfully on Keith’s hand, making her stumble.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You are a nerd, nerd.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro takes too long coming up with a witty retort, and then Keith’s spun around on her heels. Shiro blinks down at her, at the mischievous spark in her eye, at the faint freckles on her nose.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Never said it was a bad thing.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s so distracting, watching and yielding to the younger woman as she nudges Shiro backwards. So much, she almost forgets what they’re talking about.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“If you like it, I’m sure I can teach you a thing or two.” It’s not about the wine anymore, it never was. But the intensity in the way Keith watches her speak urges her on. She lets herself be guided into one of the comfy armchairs, Keith smirking down at her. “Champagne, maybe? Veneto?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith makes a pensive little noise, and takes the cane out of Shiro’s hand. She holds it in both of her palms for a moment, inspecting it like it’s a fine blade. Then she curls her fingers around it, just below the steel tip, and points the rubber handle end at Shiro.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Nah.” She muses, using the cane to trace the line of Shiro’s jaw, to tilt her head up by applying pressure below her chin. Shiro’s barely breathing, watching this young, petite woman fill out every nook and cranny in the room with her presence, swift and luscious. “I was always more of a Bordeaux kind of girl.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The cane falls on the rug with a thump, discarded as the woman in front of her enters Shiro’s space, straddling her thighs, nimble fingers disappearing into her hair. “Dark, heady.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There’s a flash of grinning teeth, before Keith’s face is too close for Shiro to see. Instead she feels the warmth of her skin. The damp puffs of breath. “Strong.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro draws a stuttering breath, hands gliding up the length of strong dancer thighs, past the short skirt, and under the silky hem of a loosely fitted top. Keith’s skin is impossibly soft, that tiny waist arching into Shiro’s touch.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“If you want me to eat you alive,” She teases, Keith’s lips brushing against hers when she talks. “-you could just say so.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith’s body turns heavy on Shiro’s lap, melting into her, breath fanning over Shiro’s mouth a little heavier. Her fingers tighten in Shiro’s hair.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Please.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>—</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro twirls a lock of sweat damp, black hair around her finger. Blunt nails drag slow patterns on her stomach, soothing motions as both their heartbeats begin to slow. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>In the half dark, curled into her body and melting into soft bedding, Keith is perfect. So impossibly beautiful, fitting against Shiro’s long limbs like they were carved for her. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s been such a long time since sex felt this important. Intertwining, spiritual almost. Something far beyond the skin and heat.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“We should go sometime.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She’s not sure where the words come from, or why she says them. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith tilts her head where she’s resting on the swell of Shiro’s breast, looking up at her with a quizzical arch to her brow. “What?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro is struck again by how pretty the woman in her bed is.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“To Bordeaux,” Shiro clearifies, and Keith’s tired eyes widen just a fraction. “I’ve never been, but I hear it’s beautiful.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith squirms around to lie on her stomach, propping herself up on her elbow. Wild hair falls over her face, and she lets Shiro brush it away with gentle fingers.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’re asking me on a cross-sea trip to France when we’ve been on one date?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her voice is light, but Shiro sees the wariness like a shadow in blue eyes. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Sorry,” Shiro curls her fingers over Keith’s jaw. “I guess it doesn’t feel like a first date to me.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There’s a twitch in the corner of Keith’s mouth, a smile trying to hide. Shiro wiggles her brows, and Keith giggles. She slaps Shiro’s stomach, huffing as she lets herself be guided in for a quick kiss.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Sappy.” She mutters, and Shiro grins. “But I guess I’d be alright with this walking and talking wet dream of mine to whisk me off to France to make out at the grand theatre and go wine tasting.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro laughs, long and loud with Keith snickering above her. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I really don’t understand you.” She muses through quiet giggles when she gathers herself. She tugs the woman at her side closer, pulling her up to get their faces level with a strong arm around Keith’s waist. “You’re… unconventional, and messy. But you still come off graceful. Like a Jackson Pollock.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith snorts, nose wrinkling and body squirming in Shiro’s hold. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Did you just compare me to a canvas covered in paint splatter?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“See that’s exactly what I mean!” Shiro watches as Keith starts to laugh, warm puffs of breath fanning across Shiro’s face. “You know and understand all this sophisticated stuff, but you’re not… it’s like you’re-“</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Selectively fancy?” Keith offers, slinging a leg over Shiro’s waist. It makes Shiro flare hot, terribly aware of just how naked they both still are. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“That’s one way to put it.” Shiro mumbles, burying her face in the crook of Keith’s neck, splaying her hand out over the plushest part of Keith’s thigh. She breathes her in, feels her pulse against her own skin. “I like it.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yeah?” Keith sounds so smug, pressing closer, into Shiro’s touch.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She doesn’t reply in words, doesn’t need to.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>—-</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s just a small cut,” Kuri rolls her eyes, but allows Shiro to dote on her nonetheless. “You don’t need to freak out every time I hurt myself.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro gives her a flat glare, and her sister averts her gaze. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Taking care of Kuri and keeping her out of harm's way used to be all Shiro put her mind to, back when they were children. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s ironic, all things considered, how things turned out. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When they were growing up, Kuri was the one who needed tending to. Always bruised or bleeding, sporting one broken bone after the other. Shiro was the unblemished one, scarless. Now she’s the one who can’t walk down the stairs to her own wine cellar because her ruined leg won’t let her. She’s the one with a striking scar right across her nose.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She remembers stepping in, breaking up the fights her twin got herself into. They were close, had the same hobbies, the same friends. Kuri’s reckless streak and Shiro chasing after her had always been what separated them most. Their friends started calling them Kuro and Shiro, black and white. It fit them nicely. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was just the universe being funny ten years later, when their father’s genes made themselves known in the shape of prematurely gray hair and Shiro’s was the one to turn fully white when Kuri’s didn’t.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro gives her sister’s hand a last squeeze, clean and wrapped up.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Thank you, for checking up on me.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Kuri smiles. “Of course.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Stupidly, Shiro’s heart leaps into her throat when she follows Kuri to the hallway and her sister opens the closet door to get her coat. There’s no way for her to know about, or risk finding, the gun hidden there, but just the proximity is enough to make the stress rise in Shiro’s gut.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But Kuri simply grabs her coat, and swings the door back shut, none the wiser. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Promise me you’ll try and do something other than mope around tomorrow.” She demands, pinning Shiro with a stubborn stare as she slips the grey wool over her shoulders. Shiro rolls her eyes, but nods.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fine.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Damn right fine, or I’ll drag you out of here and force you to do shitty stuff you hate.” She waves a threatening finger at Shiro, the other hand reaching for the handle on the front door. “Like going to Time Square in the middle of the day. On a friday.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro grimaces for effect, and her sister snickers as she walks through the door.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Goodnight!” She gives a little wave, pouting her lips in an ugly impression of a kiss. “I love you Shiro!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro huffs a little laugh, because her sister is a demon and a dork, and she always leaves Shiro feeling better even when she’s sure it won’t be possible. “Love you, Kuro.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The door clicks closed between them, and then there’s silence.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro watches her sister’s retreating figure disappear down the driveway, sees the lights on her car turn on and fade away in the distance. She stands there for a while, processing. This may very well have been the most turbulent day of her life, fatigue weighing down her limbs. But she’s wide awake, knows she won’t sleep tonight with or without the meds.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The automatic porch light turns off before she moves, signalling that she’s been standing around for a solid seven minutes, staring off into space.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She halts back down the hall, into the living room. She’s set on going upstairs, locking herself in her office until morning. But halfway to the elevator, the creak of a familiar door to her right startles her almost to stumble, and she freezes. Stares.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>What</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Malbec</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>after flipping out and deleting the chapters i had written for this fic and deciding to rewrite from ch 5 and onward, i feel alot better about this fic. i rushed it for the femsheith exchange but once i decided to take my time with it i think it finally started coming together the way i wanted it to! so i'm slowly but surely rewriting chapters with a modified plot, i just hope you can be patient with me lol</p><p>anyway, this chap gets pretty dark. the bad part is marked ** where it starts and continues till the end of the chap! please check end notes if you want to be on the safe side. happy suffering!!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Chapter 5,</p><p> </p><p><b>Malbec, type: </b> <b> <em>Blue</em> </b> <b>.</b></p><p> </p><p>
  <em> The Malbec, while a rejoiced signature grape in Argentine wine, is a dark and powerful one. With notes of dark berries, plums, cedar and tobacco, it’ll hit you right on the nose. Dry and nyansed, it’ll draw the moisture from your mouth in a sip. Pair it with food, and perhaps a glass of water, if you’re not up for the inky dark of a powerful Bordeaux or Mendoza. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> ~*~ </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Shiro stares at the figure standing in the open door to the cellar.</p><p> </p><p>“You just keep showing up in weird places today don’t you?” She says to Kolivan, looking the man over. “What the hell are you up to down there after midnight?”</p><p> </p><p>As always, Kolivan’s expression reveals nothing. </p><p> </p><p>“The temperature was off. I went to take a look.” He says after a moment of awkward silence. All information from the unit downstairs is sent to an app on Kolivan’s phone, now that Shiro can’t deal with it herself. It sends a notice when something’s off. </p><p> </p><p>But still.</p><p> </p><p>“Okay.” She knows she doesn’t sound convinced, but Kolivan doesn’t seem bothered. It annoys her. It’s why she loves him, always true to form. But right now as she scans him, his stoik face and pristine suit isn’t what she needs. </p><p> </p><p>She almost doesn’t see it in the shadow of the door.</p><p> </p><p>“Did you break something?”</p><p> </p><p>Kolivan follows the line of her gaze, to where a red shoe print shines on the stone tile.</p><p> </p><p>He sighs, and meets Shiro’s eye.</p><p> </p><p>“I apologize.” He says. “The neck caught on my cuff and fell to the floor, I’m getting cleaning supplies now. It wasn’t any of the collectibles.”</p><p> </p><p>Shiro blinks at the caretaker, a little dumbstruck.</p><p> </p><p>“That’s… fine, Kolivan.”</p><p> </p><p>She turns to leave. </p><p> </p><p>It feels like she’s walking on wet cotton without sinking into it, everything a little wonky now that the exhaustion starts to settle in. Her body screams for rest, but sleep seems far away. She does opt for the bedroom instead of her office, though, much to her aching limbs gratitude.</p><p> </p><p>When the door closes behind her, she falls back against it with a sigh, and lets the silence and stillness cover her like a heavy blanket.</p><p> </p><p>Inside her bedroom the air is chilled, crisp thanks to the best home ventilation system money can buy. Dark, cool colors, simple patterns. </p><p> </p><p>Her ex wife did everything she could and more to make this room a place for sleep. To help Shiro’s erratic mind come down at the end of the day. It’s something she’s eternally grateful for now, when sleep comes less easy than ever. </p><p> </p><p>Across the room, the arched windows frame a half moon hanging over the lake in polished brass. A thick fog covers the lake tonight, swirling grey and blue.</p><p> </p><p>Dragging her feet over to the bedside, she leaves the cane in its usual place leaned against the nightstand. The handle gleams blue in the moonlight, and Shiro hurts. A year and a half ago, she found it sitting there, in the spot where the one she had always had before was when she went to sleep the night before. She had taken a moment to notice with a sleep fogged mind, and only realized something was off when she curled her fingers around the handle and was met by cold metal instead of rubbery texture as she was used to.</p><p> </p><p>On the other end of the bed, Keith was watching her, amused and adorable with sleep mussed hair and wide, excited eyes.</p><p> </p><p>“<em> What’s this </em>?” Shiro had taken the cane in both her hands, eyes darting between it and the woman sitting curled up under the covers with just her head peeking out.</p><p> </p><p>“<em> To be clear, as your physical therapist I’m totally against this, because the silicone one has more give and is better for you </em> .” Keith started, as if reading from a card. But then she flashed Shiro a grin, sharp brows wiggling. “ <em> With that said; Do you like it?” </em></p><p> </p><p>Shiro rubs the springing tears from her eyes with the heels of her hands, and tries to shake the memory without much success. A drawer opens, a bottle rattles, and before she can think twice, she swallows her pills dry.</p><p> </p><p>She’s always hated what they do to her, how they mess with her control on her own mind and awareness just as much as they help her sleep.</p><p> </p><p>She wasn’t going to take them. Wasn’t going to allow herself to. </p><p> </p><p>She slips out of her clothes slowly, the memory of Keith watching from her side of the bed all too clear in her mind and too easy to submit to. Like the younger woman is still there, legs tucked inside the oversized t-shirt she wears to bed, sharp eyes watching from behind messy bangs as Shiro takes off her armor for the day, piece by piece.</p><p> </p><p>When her head finally hits the pillow, things are turning fuzzy at the edges. She reaches out, splaying her hand out on one of Keith’s pillows. The raging storm in her chest is becoming muted, a veil thrown over the fear, guilt and anger for now.</p><p> </p><p>She doesn’t like this feeling, doesn’t want her pain to slip away - because there’s no such thing as breaks in real life. Wherever Keith is, her hell is most definitely unwavering.</p><p> </p><p>But Shiro knows there’s no point if she loses her mind before she can fix this.</p><p> </p><p>She squeezes her eyes shut, eyebrows furrowing and fingers caressing the silky textile like she would the cheek that used to rest there. She takes a long breath.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll find you.”</p><p> </p><p>—-</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>In her dreams she chases ghosts again, purple smoke. But it’s different. This time, instead of feeling nothing, pain shoots like blades up the length of her leg with every stride. Every time her toes touch ground -</p><p> </p><p>She wakes no more than a couple of hours after falling asleep, the room still dark when she startles awake with Keith’s name on her lips.</p><p> </p><p>The pills hold tight to the veil wrapped around her mind, the barrier that makes everything a little… <em> less </em>.</p><p> </p><p>Less vivid, less anxious. Less painful.</p><p> </p><p>But it’s not enough to take her back to sleep.</p><p> </p><p>She moves to the closet on wobbly legs, drunk balance. Struggles into the pewter grey and rippling, flowing jumpsuit that reminds her of stormy clouds. Sobers up little by little as she leaves the room for the hall and the elevator.</p><p> </p><p>The metal cage rattles and it bounces off the walls in the stillness for a second morning in a row. But today, Shiro doesn’t have the mind to let the usual bitterness bloom. Instead she feels the thrum I’d stress and fear prickling at the veil, seeping through the flimsy mesh of <em> less </em>.</p><p> </p><p>The automatic lights blink to life the moment she steps out on the living room floor, dimmed and warm but growing slowly brighter, tracing her single-focused movement down the hall and straight out the door.</p><p> </p><p>There, she’s met by darkness, and fog. </p><p> </p><p>No letter, no package, nothing and no one awaits her arrival out on the porch. And even though she knew that would most definitely be the case, a sting of hopelessness pierces her medically blurred mind anyway.</p><p> </p><p>Part of her had hoped it would just be that easy. As simple as waking up and finding the answers waiting for her here in the wee hours.</p><p> </p><p>—-</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em> Keith stands in the doorway, blinking at Shiro and the raised fist that was just knocking on the green painted steel door. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> If Shiro didn’t know better, she would’ve never figured this to be an apartment door in the first place. One of two, at the back of an old movie theater that in recent years is only used for small film festivals and rare showings arranged by the couple living in the bigger apartment next door.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Keith’s door is part of the old loading dock gate, industrial metal and hardly visible. But Keith had pointed it out, the week before when Shiro dropped her off. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “What-“ Keith looks so surprised, so caught off guard to find Shiro here. Which is justified, as Shiro didn’t give any warning beforehand. And she was supposed to be stuck at dinner for at least another hour according to an earlier estimate. “What are you doing here, Shiro?” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “I’m sorry,” It dawns upon Shiro that she’s showing up unannounced at ten pm, outside someone she’s only been dating for three weeks door. “I should have called first, this is really stupid. It’s just the dinner was awful and I had to leave and then when I got in the cab I the driver asked me where I wanted to go and all I could think of was seeing you and—” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Shiro halts her rambling, watching Keith’s face carefully. The girl has got a great poker face, and Shiro can’t tell what she’s thinking, what that little glint in her eye means. “Keith?” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Her sudden nervousness must reflect on her expression, because Keith’s face settles into something softer, a small smile curving the side of her mouth. She pushes herself off the doorframe where she’s been leaning, and raises a hand to brush Shiro’s cheek with her knuckles. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “You’re funny.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> A smiley flash of white teeth, followed by a chaste kiss that reels Shiro in like a hook on a line. When Keith backs into the apartment, Shiro follows, chasing her girlfriend’s warm hands and lips. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> The first thing she takes in is how much the place smells like Keith. A scent that, in the past few weeks, has gone from a guilty pleasure to something thrilling. Exciting, intoxicating. Not safe, but like here surrounded by this woman, is where Shiro is supposed to be. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Keith smells like adventure, and belonging. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Spice and heat, warm sand. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Keith loops her arms around Shiro’s neck and stretches tall, up on her tiptoes. Shiro tilts her head to even out the remaining height difference, eager for the promise of another kiss. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> But Keith doesn’t kiss her. Just nips playfully at Shiro’s bottom lip, her mouth gone as soon as it came, and it leaves Shiro’s mouth tingling. Keith just grins, and disappears into the next room before Shiro can gather herself. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> It’s the thrill and the terror with Keith, never being able to predict her. Not knowing what surprise Shiro is in for next. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Shiro shakes her head to herself, letting that tingle and warmth and excitement wash away the remnants of a bad business day, settling right in the marrow of her bones. The dopey smile that sits on her mouth is becoming blessedly common in the past weeks, a spitting image of a lovesick fool. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> She can’t remember it ever being like this, before.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> It’s all Keith. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Shiro doesn’t hurry to skip after her, though. She takes a moment to scan her surroundings, the spacious hallway that opens up to a simple kitchen, and she swears she could have picked it out as Keith’s home without knowing.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> The floor beneath her shoes must be the original, rough and stained concrete. It’s partly covered in various rugs, everywhere you need to walk. It’s an uncoordinated mess of different colors and textures, but it comes together nicely. The wall to her right, where there is a spherical opening through which Keith had gone, is made from dark-oiled wood. Recycled planks, judging from the faded stamps and damage.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Straight ahead, the kitchen cuts through the upcycled thrift aesthetic, with a sleek and modern design. Glossy, red cupboards, a black granite countertop. A small breakfast island with two high chairs. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> It’s gorgeous, and very Keith. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Shiro slips out of her coat, and hangs it over Keith’s red leather jacket on the overflowing rack. She follows the string of fairy lights lining the top of the wooden wall, and peeks her head past the heavy curtain hanging in the rounded doorway.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> The next room has the same vibe, thrift store grunge with a few specks of modern technology. A neon sign of a crown bathes the room in an orange glow, posters and paintings cover the walls. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> In the middle of it, Keith watches her from a worn couch full of mixed pillows. Her hair is in a messy ponytail, and she wears a loose pair of jeans and a sweatshirt that hangs off her small frame. Keith doesn’t usually wear a big amount of makeup, but clean faced like this Shiro can see the wear from a rough work week in the shadows beneath her eyes. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Her leg hurts when sinks into the soft cushions next to Keith, and the cane rolls under the coffee table when she drops it, but none of it takes much presence. Shiro feels like she’s walked straight into Keith, into her soul or her heart. Something like that. Every inch of this home screams of her girlfriend, and it’s more intoxicating than the numerous glasses of wine she’s downed back at the restaurant. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> She leans into Keith, buries her face in a mess of hair and soft fabric and softer skin at her collar. She presses a dry kiss onto Keith’s shirt, sighs. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “I like it here.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Keith’s shoulder bounce when she chuckles. “Yeah?” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Fingers card through Shiro’s sleek hairdo, effectively ruining it and something about that makes Shiro feel a little bit more… free. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “It’s very you.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “I guess.” Keith shifts until she’s half lying down on a heap of pillows, pulling Shiro with her until Shiro’s chin rests on her girlfriend’s chest. “Tell me about your dinner.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “The bouillabaisse was good?” Shiro says through a stale smile, breaking into giggles when Keith snorts and slaps her on the side of her head. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “C’mon, Shirogane.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Shiro grunts. “Well. Firstly, business dinners are never great. Less great when there are lawyers involved. It tips over to unbearable when you add an opposing part that doesn’t have the word no in their vocabulary.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Keith grimaces, and keeps stroking Shiro’s hair in slow, soothing motions.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “One of my shareholders is trying to buy out another, but there’s a protocol that keeps anyone but me from owning more than ten percent of the company unless I agree.” Shiro explains, feeling tired. Sometimes she can’t grasp why she got herself into business ownership in the first place. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “And you’re not letting them?” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “No. I don’t trust him with that much influence. He wouldn’t try this without an ulterior motive.” Shiro sighs again, sinking deeper into the couch and Keith. She could fall asleep here. “Lotor really knows how to piss me off.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> The hands in her hair go still, something dark flashing in the younger woman’s eyes at the mention of the name. It’s just for a second, barely noticeable. But Shiro notices. And she remembers, the similar reaction she saw in Keith the first time they met and it came up who led Shiro to Keith’s practise in the first place. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Hey,” Shiro tightens her arms around Keith’s waist, squeezes gently. “Did he do something to you? I can tell you have a problem with him.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> She knows Lotor Daibazaal pretty well. It’s not hard to imagine what the problem might be, even if Shiro doesn’t like jumping to conclusions. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “He’s an arrogant asshole.” Keith mutters, breaking eye contact for the first time since Shiro joined her on the couch. “What you said about no not being in his vocabulary is quite right.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Shiro regrets not pouring that last glass of wine over Lotor’s head. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Keith-” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “It’s fine.” Keith says, a little too sharply. “He gave up eventually. And he doesn’t come around anymore, so.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> To say Lotor can be insistent is to put it lightly, and Shiro has seen before how this is true not only to his business proceedings. Her assistant had more than a handful of the man, a year or so ago. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Does he know yet, about us?” Keith asks, before Shiro has a chance to burst into a rant about how the idiot harassing her eventually giving up doesn’t make it okay. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Keith knows all that. She doesn’t need to hear it. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “I don’t think so.” Shiro lifts herself up on one of her elbows, her other hand reaching to touch Keith’s face. “Would you prefer if he doesn’t know?” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Oh, I want him to know.” Keith huffs, and scoots down on the cushions until she’s flat on her back with Shiro above her. Quick fingers start to tug Shiro’s shirt from where it’s tucked into her slacks.  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> It takes her a moment to catch up, for her brain to register the change of direction in their conversation, the smirk on Keith’s mouth. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Want to see the look on his face when he finds out he’s not getting his way in either direction.” That mouth catches Shiro’s in a kiss, purposeful and slow. “Want him to know we found each other.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> --- </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>She’s not sure if she should even take the call or not, when Hunk’s name appears on the screen. It rings, and rings. The desktop vibrates and she feels it in her hands but-</p><p> </p><p>It stops. And Shiro exhales.</p><p> </p><p>Maybe she should have answered. Hunk is Keith’s best friend. </p><p> </p><p>She only has a moment to start beating herself up before the vibrations start anew, Hunk’s friendly face smiling up at her from the little contact photo bubble. This time she’s faster than her doubts, pressing the phone to her ear before she can think better of it.</p><p> </p><p>“Hunk?” her voice comes out weaker than she means it to, tentative almost.</p><p> </p><p>“<em> Hey, Shiro </em> .” he sounds about the same as Shiro. “ <em> Do you have a minute? </em>”</p><p> </p><p>“I- yeah.” She shouldn’t be surprised that it hurts, hearing Hunk’s voice. “Yes, sure.”</p><p> </p><p>But it does.</p><p> </p><p>“<em> Alright so, uh, you haven’t- </em> “ she has heard Hunk concerned before, worried even, over the past two years. She’s heard him nervous, and doubting, and frightened. She’s never heard him like this. “ <em> -talked to Keith, in the past few days, have you? </em>”</p><p> </p><p>It’s like she’s hopped in the lake, cold and dark and everywhere. Guilt on top of guilt, pulling her under. She swallows the lump in her throat, breathes the sudden dizziness away, and suddenly she doesn’t know how long Hunk has been waiting for her answer.</p><p> </p><p>“I haven’t.” She says, as definite as she can.</p><p> </p><p>Hunk curses under his breath, and it makes the chill in her bones spike. Hunk might be the gentlest man she knows, calm and well behaved. He doesn’t swear.</p><p> </p><p>“She didn’t, like, text you, or anything? Nothing?” </p><p> </p><p>There’s a desperation in his voice that Shiro can relate to. She wishes she could tell him, everything she knows. But perhaps that’s more for her own benefit, to not carry the burden alone.</p><p> </p><p>“No, I haven’t heard from her.” Shiro assures. And the question leaves her mouth the second it crosses her mind. “Should I have?”</p><p> </p><p>“<em> Oh, man </em> .” Hunk mutters over the receiver. It’s muffled, like he’s covering his mouth, or speaking into a pillow. “ <em> Are you sure you didn’t hear anything? </em>”</p><p> </p><p>He’s pleading.</p><p> </p><p>“Hunk.” How she manages to sound stern is beyond her. “Why are you asking?”</p><p> </p><p>“<em> Okay, okay look </em> -“ he’s losing his footing, the stress taking over his voice. She hears his labored breathing, the higher pitch when he forces out words. “ <em> I know me and Lance said she didn’t call us or anything when she left. I didn’t want to! But we figured if we confirmed we were talking to her you would maybe, y’know, try to reach her through us and she really wanted to get away for a while so- </em>“</p><p> </p><p>Shiro takes a small breath of relief. She figured all along, Keith’s friends would have expressed more worry if they didn’t know she was alright. Shiro suspected all of what Hunk is telling her, and she lived off that. Off knowing they knew she was okay, and so she knew too. At least until yesterday.</p><p> </p><p>“<em> And then she said she was coming back- </em>“ Hunk continues to talk too fast, but Shiro feels her blood freeze over. She hears him talking, but the words all blend together. All she hears is those words. </p><p> </p><p>“She was coming back?” Shiro’s voice is a whisper, but enough to interrupt Hunk in his retelling of a story Shiro didn’t hear.</p><p> </p><p>A moment passes in silence, and she waits.</p><p> </p><p>“<em> Yeah </em> .” Hunk confirms, voice softened. “ <em> She called me. She was back in town and she said she was going to go find you, and then I didn’t hear anything and now- </em>“</p><p> </p><p>The sentence fizzles into nothing. All Shiro hears is the pounding of her heart in her ears.</p><p> </p><p>“When was this?” She hears herself ask.</p><p> </p><p>Hunk’s reply comes as in slow motion, loud and echoing in Shiro’s skull.</p><p> </p><p>“Three days ago.”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>—-</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>It hurt. It physically hurt to craft and tell a believable theory of Keith probably getting cold feet and needing some more time, that surely she will contact Hunk and Lance again soon.</p><p> </p><p>Just so that Hunk wouldn’t insist on calling the police.</p><p> </p><p>The second the call ended she drew for breath, and it tore like splinters in her throat. Hot tears sprang to her eyes and streamed down her face for the next twenty minutes. By the end of it, her body ached from shaking. </p><p> </p><p>She’s so tired of pain.</p><p> </p><p>She sinks deeper into the loveseat sofa in her office, thoughtlessly watching her own thumb trace the delicate engravings on the knob of her cane. She feels heavy, thirty minutes after downing two more Vicodin with Chardonnay. A little numb. </p><p> </p><p>She’s been waiting, and waiting, for something to happen. Gone from panic with the thunderous heart and trouble breathing to completely disconnected and back, over and over. </p><p> </p><p>Too much time alone with her mind and the drugs that either tames it or makes it worse. She never really can tell.</p><p> </p><p>It makes it almost unreal, impossible, when a shrill alarm invades the nonsense whispers in her ears. </p><p> </p><p>She knows it’s time, finally. But even if she’s out of her seat and headed down to the blaring alarm of her car in seconds, she isn’t sure if she’s ready. </p><p> </p><p>Then again she probably never will be.</p><p> </p><p>—-</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Outside the world is foggy and grey. It’s raining again. In the little parking lot an orange flash of light blinks through the fog, even if she clicked the alarm off as fast as she was within range. </p><p> </p><p>When she gets to her car, the drivers seat door is ajar. </p><p> </p><p>She can’t help but think, this is not in line with the book. The part where the main character’s car gets broken into is much further along in the story, and has little to do with the bribe.</p><p> </p><p>But, still.</p><p> </p><p>Einstein said the perception of time is relative. And Shiro agrees, because fast and slow blends together when she hurries the last few feet and yet everything moves so slowly.</p><p> </p><p>This is where the character finds the severed head of her cat in the driver’s seat. A gruesome warning to stop sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.</p><p> </p><p>What Shiro finds isn’t nearly as dark. But maybe just as terrifying, in the end.</p><p> </p><p>It feels like it freezes entirely, when she sees the package sitting on the seat, and she feels her heart drop to her stomach.</p><p> </p><p>It’s a brown paper envelope, and even if it’s stained and wrinkled, there’s no mistaking it’s the same one she dropped off last night. Sealed still, taken out of that trash can and tossed back in her car.</p><p> </p><p>She takes it in her hands, and drops down on the seat. Her head spins.</p><p> </p><p>Was the money not enough? Could they know without opening the envelope? She’ll pay anything. They’d know that if they only opened the package and read the note she left there.</p><p> </p><p>Or maybe it was never about money in the first place.</p><p> </p><p>But then what?</p><p> </p><p>A fresh wave of frustrated tears blur her vision, and she hits the horn hard enough to feel plastic snap under the pressure. Across the yard, blackbirds flee from the tree tops at the sound.</p><p> </p><p>Something rustles where it shouldn’t under her palm, paper crinkling and bowing around her hand, and she realizes it’s a note. Taped to the steering wheel. She almost crushes it in her fist ripping it off, then smoothies it out on her lap.</p><p> </p><p>It’s a printed message, crisp black letters spelling out an address. </p><p> </p><p>—-</p><p>**</p><p> </p><p>She’s being played with.</p><p> </p><p>The rain smatters on the windshield, and Shiro glares through the watery lines on the glass at the building outside. This is where the note has taken her, and she finds that she is more angry than anything else, now.</p><p> </p><p>The water tower isn’t the second book.</p><p> </p><p>It’s the starting scene, faceless figures in a chase up the many stairs of a water tower, a surrender, and a body left behind at the top. But Shiro suspects there won’t be anyone else but her in there, in this case.</p><p> </p><p>She leaves the cane in the car. It won’t help her now.</p><p> </p><p>At the bottom of the tower, the door is unlocked. Off white paint chips catch on her coat when she pulls the creaking and heavy door open and steps into the stairwell. </p><p> </p><p>There’s a post-it note, sitting on the first step. She reads it without picking it up, anger running red hot.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Sticks and stones, Shiro </em>
</p><p> </p><p>The steps stare back at her in mockery. When was the last time she climbed a flight of stairs? </p><p> </p><p>A month ago, she was doing better than she ever had. She was walking short distances at a brisk pace, getting up on that treadmill and doing her exercises under Keith’s supervision every day. </p><p> </p><p>She had started dreaming of running again, even if she yet couldn’t get from one floor in her own house to the other without an elevator. </p><p> </p><p>Now she’s back on zero. Like shards of glass sit in the muscle, just waiting to tear into it when she moves.</p><p> </p><p>She swallows the urge to groan in pain on the very first step.</p><p> </p><p>Keeping her eyes on her feet so she won’t have to watch the spiraling staircase keep going and going, Shiro clutches the metal railing with clammy hands and works her way up. It doesn’t take more than ten or so steps for the cold sweats to dampen her clothes, the beginnings of that pain-induced nausea to gather in the pit of her stomach. </p><p> </p><p>Fifteen, twenty.</p><p> </p><p>She’s crying again, for too many reasons to count. </p><p> </p><p>Twenty five. Her body gives out, and she stumbles. For a long moment, she doesn’t breathe.</p><p> </p><p>Just past thirty, another note appears through the blur of tears and deliriousness. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Does it hurt yet? Is she worth it? </em>
</p><p> </p><p>The dark and thorny thing in Shiro’s chest twists until the strain is almost worse than that of her leg. The nausea rises, and it’s like a dark filter falls on her surroundings. She doesn’t need to close her eyes even, to see the image of Keith’s face smeared with red.</p><p> </p><p>The next couple of steps hurt a little less, powered just by will and anger and determination. But it doesn’t take long for the help to fall aside, and by forty five she’s roughly halfway to the top when she breaks. She collapses, panting and worn to the bone. Soaked in sweat but freezing cold, her spasming muscles refuse to listen.</p><p> </p><p>It’s right at the juncture between hip and thigh, right where she was pinned and crushed under the weight and pressure of her car breaking and collapsing in on her. Shiro’s vision swims with flashing lights, and the faint sound of screeching tires, sirens, screaming, ring in her ears beneath the sound of her heartbeat. She can almost feel it, the muscle snapping, skin and bone breaking all over again.</p><p> </p><p>Her spine stiffens in an impossible way, and it’s so much, all of it, she’s barely aware of her heaving until the foul taste of vomit fills her mouth. It splatters on the steps where she’s curled up with her back against the wall.</p><p> </p><p>She feels herself starting to slip. Feels everything start to build in that way it always does before it fades into nothing and she faints.</p><p> </p><p>But instead of everything turning to black, there’s a face. A smell. A voice, a <em> touch </em>. It’s not Keith in distress or in pain or in anger, this time. It’s a crooked grin and a sultry laugh, warm hands on Shiro’s skin. </p><p> </p><p>And it tugs on Shiro’s heart, so much that she shakes awake.</p><p> </p><p>With most of her weight on the railing, she gets a little further. And a little further.</p><p> </p><p>When she finds the next item sitting there to taunt her on the very last step of the stairwell, she’s torn between the urge to kick and send it flying without looking at it, and an undeniable pull towards it. It’s not without a surge of shame, that pull. Because instead of another note, what she sees is an orange little bottle. It triggers something in her, that need to make the pain go away.</p><p> </p><p>But the bottle, when she grabs it, doesn’t contain any pills.</p><p> </p><p>In it is a powder, what remains of the contents after being crushed. That, and a rolled up fucking note. Again, she’s tempted to toss it. To not let it get another hit in.</p><p> </p><p>She can’t help it, though. So she tips the bottle, the little paper roll landing in the palm of her hand in a little pile of white powder. It dusts her hands, and there’s a strong and disgusting urge to lick it off her skin, to devour it and let the pain fade.</p><p> </p><p>That feeling only hits her harder in shame, when the message printed on the paper becomes clear.</p><p> </p><p>She wants to throw up again.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> Don’t you think it’s unfair - how you get to ease your pain and she doesn’t? </em>
</p><p> </p><p>The note falls between her fingers, and she manages a quivering breath. Everything hurts.</p><p> </p><p>Maybe it’s muscle memory that makes her grasp for the bottle again, even if she knows it’s empty. Even if that’s the whole point. She turns it over in her shaking hands. A chill travels down her back when she sees the name printed on the label. </p><p> </p><p>Takashi Shirogane.</p><p>**</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>added tags: graphic description of pain and injury, vomiting, torture</p><p> </p><p>my nerd ass made pinterest boards to portray the girls aesthetics! you can find them here:<br/><a href="https://www.pinterest.se/lobackberg/bfg-shiro-aesthetic/">SHIRO</a>      <a href="https://www.pinterest.se/lobackberg/bfg-keith-aesthetic/">KEITH</a></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Grenache</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TW for mention of child abuse and sexual abuse (pedophilia)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Chapter 6,</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Grenache/Garnacha</b>
  <b>
    <em>, Type: Blue</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Grown across the globe, the Grenache ripens late in the season and produces light color wines with especially high alcohol content. A grape that for a long time has been labeled as low caliber, as it is widely grown and primarily used for commercial wine. In recent years, however, the popular grape has seen some recognition in the world of high quality wine, making a new name and changing its reputation. This by giving it the time and love that it needs, to show its true colors, and thus producing rich, top shelf wines.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>~*~</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Three… Two…” Shiro hears the click of the stopwatch in Keith’s hand over the whir of the treadmill. “That’s it! Great work Sh-”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Let’s do another thirty.” she huffs, tasting the sweat running on her face when she opens her mouth. It’s uncomfortable. It hurts. But she’s doing it and it’s not as bad as it has been. Just walking slowly with her hands clutched on the support beams for a minute, it’s so much.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Overdoing it is not-” Keith starts to argue, in that professional voice Shiro loves and loathes equally during their sessions.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Just a little more.” Shiro swats at her girlfriend and PT’s hand when it reaches for the stop button, and hisses when the sudden lack of support on that side puts more weight on her leg in the next step.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She stares at the digital numbers, counting the seconds and feeling that rush of accomplishment warm her blood. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s just a whisper of what she used to do before the accident, when hours upon hours challenging herself physically was one of her greatest pastimes. But she can almost taste it, that endorphin high, that good ache.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When the band halts beneath her feet, she swears in surprise and nearly stumbles.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Next to her, Keith drops the string attached to the emergency break with a flat look. And just like that, the bubble is burst. Shiro feels the exhaustion creep up on her, the throbbing in her thigh. Keith arches a knowing eyebrow, and she offers a sheepish smile in response.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Sorry,” she pants, rubbing the sweat from her brow. “Got carried away.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Mhm.” Keith crosses her arms over her chest, a smirk playing on her lips.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro takes the younger woman’s hand when it’s offered to help her off the treadmill, and holds on to it when they leave the gym. They’re at Shiro’s home gym today, and Shiro is glad. As much as she enjoys visiting Keith at her office, it’s nice having the comfort of her own home right outside the door after a particularly tough session.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“How did you become such a hardass anyway?” she asks, bumping Keith with her elbow as they make their way down the hall. It’s supposed to be a joke, just a nudge at Keith’s tough side. But Shiro does wonder. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They’ve been dating for almost six months, and they’ve been fantastic. Keith is amazing in all the ways Shiro knew and more, and their chemistry is unwavering. It’s been a bit of a challenge for Shiro to adapt to the slow and steady pace of a developing relationship. In her whole adult life, that deep level of comfort and predictability has been a given. She’s never done this. But she does her best, and does so happily. Because unlocking new things, new stories and details that are part of Keith has been a thrill and a pleasure too great for words.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>However, those details are coming in slowly.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith is a highly private character, and it didn’t take long for Shiro to pick up on the fact most of her girlfriends stories evades the topic of her upbringing. Like her life consisted of a handful of vague anecdotes until college. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro doesn’t want to push, but the curiosity has slowly been turning into need. To connect, and to know everything there is to know about the woman she loves.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Which is also something she’s been holding herself back from. Saying it out loud with Keith listening, that is. So far, everything is going so well, and she doesn’t want to stress Keith out. Holding back on ‘I love you’s until Keith is ready to hear them has been the biggest challenge.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She would have said it every five minutes from day one if she didn’t have the self control.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith only snorts at the question, and disappears down the hall with a promise of getting lunch ready while Shiro showers.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>—</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They’re halfway through the meal, and Shiro is just about to ask why Keith is so quiet, what’s got her down, when Keith suddenly speaks.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“My parents died.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She says it so quietly, and without looking at Shiro, she almost misses it. Just a leaf rustling in the wind. But when it sinks in, Shiro instinctively reaches across the table for Keith’s hand.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She squeezes, and doesn’t speak. There’s something fragile and vulnerable surrounding Keith all of a sudden, and Shiro is scared so much as breathing too hard might break it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“When I was twelve, both my parents were killed.” Keith’s free hand has gone still where it was poking around the plate with the chopsticks. “I was there, in our pawn shop. I just came there from practice. It was a regular afternoon and we were talking about what to get for dinner and then-“</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro feels her mouth run dry, dread rising in her chest.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“It was some guy. He pawned his wife’s wedding ring and gambled the money away. He came in piss drunk and demanded it back without paying, made a big mess. My pops kicked him out on his ass.” Keith sounds far away when she speaks, and Shiro wonders what images she’s seeing. “The shithead came back with a gun next time, started swinging it around, making threats. I was crouching behind the counter.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith lifts her head, and looks at Shiro through her bangs.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And Shiro hurts, staring back at the intensive pair of blue eyes that she’s never seen like this. Like they opened for the first time, raw from being exposed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Then all of a sudden,” Keith’s voice quickly goes from weak to thick and wet, choking on a suppressed sob. “They were gone. And I was alone.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro moves without thinking, just needing to be closer, to keep Keith safe. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Somehow they end up on the floor, Shiro with her legs straight on the floor and Keith curled halfway up on her lap. It doesn’t hurt nearly enough for Shiro to move. She just sits there, holding Keith as the other woman tucks her face in Shiro’s neck and breathes in deeply.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“After that, I -“ Keith stops, swallows. Shiro can feel her trembling.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She strokes her girlfriend's hair, and makes a soothing noise, holding her tighter. “Keith. You don’t need to-“</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I want to.” Keith interrupts, with more of an edge to her voice. But she doesn’t lift her head from Shiro’s shoulder, doesn’t move from where her nose digs into the skin on Shiro’s neck. “I want you to know, everything.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro doesn’t protest any more. She just keeps combing through Keith’s hair, waiting for her to find her words at her own pace.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I don’t have any other family. So I got stuck in the system.” Shiro cringes. “As you can probably guess, it was shit. I bounced from place to place for a couple of years.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She notices easily, how Keith’s body starts to tense up. Strings pulling tight. For a long moment, neither of them say anything.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I was fourteen when the latest sleazeball foster dad crawled into my bed one night.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Something in Shiro turns to steel, cold and hard and vicious. Keith must notice, because she moves even closer, drops a soft kiss where her lips rest on Shiro’s skin. It’s backwards that Keith feels the need to comfort Shiro when she’s the one spilling her darkest memories on the kitchen floor, but Shiro appreciates it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I got even. Hit him over the head with a bottle of Jack.” A bit of dry humor seeps into Keith’s voice at that, and Shiro is glad. “And I was already a trouble case, so they sent me off to juvie for assault after that. Which honestly was the best damn thing to ever happen.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro can’t imagine how bad it must’ve been, for Keith to consider juvie an improvement. Shiro can’t understand any of this, beyond what her imagination can conjure. Which must be nothing, in comparison. She’s from an upper middle class family, went to good schools. Never in her life has she had to worry about the adults in her life, or anything of the sort.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“When I got out things got better. I had a deal with the foster family they put me with next.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>‘A deal’ for a teenage orphan doesn’t sound much like a healthy living situation.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I showed up at the house when I needed to, let them cash their checks. In return they signed permission slips, pretended to care in PTA meetings, stuff like that.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro frowns. “You didn’t live at their house?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No.” Keith confirms, and raises a finger to Shiro’s mouth before she can start pladdering in panic. “I was still taking dance at the youth center, and some of the kids there had tips on places to crash until I got my own contacts and stuff. After a while I got a job working graveyard shifts at a gas station, and the manager let me sleep and store some stuff there for free. It was fine.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Keith…” Shiro doesn’t know what she wants to say. Nothing seems like enough, nothing sounds right in her head.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She can’t believe this incredibly strong, fearless woman even exists. Even less that she’s chosen to be here, with her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Anyway,” Keith clears her throat, tries to cover her snivel. She leans back to look at Shiro, face blotchy and red with tear streaks drying on her cheeks. Still she’s the most beautiful thing. “That’s how I became such a hardass.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They laugh. It’s a little broken, a little laced with more relief than joy. But at least they laugh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>—-</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Finding the strength to get back down to the bottom of the tower isn’t easy, even if she knows well that down is much easier than up. Her entire body is in protest, cold and rigid both because of pain and horror.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>If the pill bottle is hers, does that mean this psycho has been inside her house?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t even want to try and process the implication of Keith being put through physical pain. It’s been in and out of her mind all since this started, but now it’s tangible in a whole different way, and that shakes Shiro to her core.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Every step down is searing. She loses count on how many times she stops just in order to breathe.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The door has closed while she was up there, and the idea of someone locking her in here strikes like lightning. She’s down the last few steps faster than the rest, brought forward by terror alone. She crashes into the door when her legs give out, her entire body trembling and heart thundering in her chest. She almost plants her face on the slip of paper taped to the door, hardly visible in the dim light and matching color to the door. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro braces herself with her hands on the cold steel, and snivels. She’s not sure she can take any more. Every part of her hopes for it to just be her developing a paranoia and that this one is just some maintenance slip or some shit that has nothing to do with her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s not, though.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In a small font, right in the middle of the full sized paper, is a little smiley face and an arrow pointing up.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The caption reads; “Smile!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She follows the direction of the little arrow, looking up at the tall wall encasing the stairs. It takes her a moment.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But once she sees what’s there, her vision bleeds red, mind going blank.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What-“ she stares into the blinking little camera, some cheap thing duct-taped to the concrete. “What the fuck is </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong</span>
  </em>
  <span> with you?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She means to think it, mumble it at best. But it comes out in a scream, cracked and ruined like the pain under her hands, and it’s like the building shakes with how it bounces off the walls.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>—-</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>The door opens for her, but her fear of being locked in has already gone up in smoke. She’s back to where she started, seething, so angry she’s dizzy with it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s a dangerous drive back, a reckless one. She’s awake but it’s like she’s zoning in and out of consciousness, blacking out with her eyes open when the contained storm in her overflows every few moments.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Under all the anger, the fear and the guilt, though, she’s much too aware of the hopelessness gnawing away at her bones. There’s not a single damn thing she can do, she has no idea where to look or where to start if she wants to find Keith. It’s much too risky to take it to the police. There’s no one she knows who may be able to help.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s not like in the movies, or in her own books, where convenient clues would land on her lap and point her in the right direction.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And it’s not a typical case of kidnapping for a ransom, either.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Out there is someone who just wants to see her hurt.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Which is exactly what they’re getting, and there are no signs of it slowing down. There’s no definite end goal. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro has no idea what to do with that. But it’s picking at her rib cage from the inside like a frightened bird trying to break out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The familiar sound of gravel giving way to the weight and movement of her car when she pulls up at the house has always been a strange kind of soothing. Like taking a breath, and knowing she’s home, and safe. It’s been a great comfort through the years of nasty meetings and all the other hardships that come with running a business as a public figure and a woman.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It doesn’t feel like comfort now.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She looks through the window at her house. This big, aging structure of red bricks and black panel roofing. The arched windows in their copper frames, painted black on the outside to match the other details that run through exterior as much as interior.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>On a normal day she doesn’t think of it much. On a good day, she might look at it and feel lucky to have such a beautiful home.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But today it could just as well be a graying mansion at the top of a hill, with green lit fog seeping out from its foundation.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It looks haunted, and unwelcoming.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s no part of her that wants to get in there.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She thinks about what it was like, before Keith, but after Adam left. When she would spend entire nights at her office in the city just to avoid coming home. When the house felt like a huge manifest of her own failures.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It feels like that again. Except this time, it’s not only feelings that are getting hurt, a marriage ending.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro clenches the steering wheel so hard her joints start to protest. She doesn’t realize she’s squeezed her eyes shut, blocked out the view of the house and the yard and the lake. Not until the image is replaced, too crisp and clear to be fair. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Like a film strip projected straight onto her eyelids, Keith dances. She’s weightless, delicate like a paper figure caught in the wind. Her hair is in a messy braid, the lavender silk button up reaching halfway down her bare thighs is Shiro’s. The light is warm and low, and there’s a lingering smell of last night’s pizza and beer forgotten on the coffee table.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It rips and tears at Shiro, but underneath, there is something almost serene. And she knows where she needs to go.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro has to drag herself out of the car. Her body hurts and the entire house feels like a trap when she moves across the gravel.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Just a quick visit to her desk. Just to grab the key from the middle left side drawer, and she can leave.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>—-</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The music is faint, set so low she can barely hear it. The little thumps and shuffling of Keith’s movements are what she listens to. It’s been a few minutes since she woke up, cradled in sheets and pillows smelling of her girlfriend. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And since then, she’s quietly been watching Keith dance. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro has known since the ballet recital where she first saw Keith dance, that it would become one of her greatest pleasures. But every time she’s imagined it since then, it’s been like that. A stage, spotlights, shimmering makeup and clapping hands. Or on occasion a studio practice, little daydreams of picking Keith up at the studio and arriving early to see her move in front of a mirrored wall.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She never imagined it like this. But already, she’s decided it’s her favorite.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith’s movements aren’t as fluid as they were on stage, her body not as warmed up, muscles not as loose. Yet like this she appears dreamlike, bare feet skipping over the different rugs covering the concrete floor, surrounded by her own things in her own home, bathed in morning light seeping through the sheer red curtains. Dancing to a song only meant for herself to hear, dancing for no one.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s beautiful in a whole different kind of way, and it makes a dopey smile tug on Shiro’s lips.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When Keith’s toes catch on the frills of a rug, and she stumbles with a very quiet oof, Shiro suppresses the urge to snort, or say something. She opts to keep on watching, stay in this pocket of reality where all she knows is what she sees. But Keith seems to have broken her own spell, and doesn’t pick up what she was doing. Instead she giggles quietly to herself, and smoothes out the fabric of Shiro’s shirt that’s caught between her thighs with the movement. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro is so enamoured by this woman, and the peek at her in her own space when she thinks no one is watching, it takes her a moment to even realize when Keith catches her gaze.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When she does, she feels her face heat up, turns her head to hide in the pillow like an embarrassed child.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith’s feet thump across the floor and she slips back into bed with a little bounce. Her hands are warm and her painted nails prick at Shiro’s skin where the covers have left her bare during the night. Dextrous fingers creep slowly up the curve of her waist, ribs, only to skim over soft nipples and take purchase in the junctures of Shiro’s shoulders where they begin to knead the sleep warm skin and muscle there.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Good morning.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith’s voice is a purr. Shiro hums happily, turns to look back at the woman leaning over her. The red toned light from the curtains covering the window just by the bed paints Keith a soft pink, makes her blue eyes appear a magical purple.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Morning.” Shiro smiles softly, and reaches for the face hovering inches above to bring Keith down for a slow, leisurely kiss.</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>—-</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s almost completely dark out, when Shiro inserts the key in the familiar steel door. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’s kept herself from doing this, from abusing her key privileges even if Keith technically hasn’t lived here in months. She pushed the option so far away, not wanting to cross any more boundaries considering what made Keith leave in the first place, it didn’t even come to her when all this started. Not until today.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The apartment is chilly with the heat turned off, but the lights flicker to life at the flick of a switch, so at least the electricity is still connected.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro had tried not to feel hurt when Keith didn’t want to give up her apartment. But she also knew who she was dealing with, how long it’d taken Keith just to get to a point where moving in even seemed like an option in the first place.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The space still smells like Keith, even if it’s more faint than it used to be.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro drags her fingers on the wooden wall, feels the bumps and ridges of recycled driftwood as she all but tiptoes into the main space. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Most of the furniture is still there, but the personal details and trinkets are gone. Moved in an attempt to bring some new character to a fancy old house, months ago. Shiro wasn’t of much use, holding thing after thing in her hands to ask about their origin instead of packing, laughing when Keith scolded her for it and told her to get a move on.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It seems like infinity ago, now.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Keith’s duffel bag sits on the old couch, and there’s a Starbucks to go mug with red lipstick on its lid on the coffee table. It makes the nasty writhing and scorching thing in Shiro’s chest snarl, bite viciously at her heart.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Keith was here, just like Hunk told her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She sits on the coffee table, and pulls the bag onto her lap. It instantly smells like Keith’s car, of old leather and diesel, the sesame crisps she always kept there.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Inside is a bunch of clothes, toiletries. Keith is a backpack kind of girl, keeps the most important stuff close especially when she travels. But there’s no trace of Keith’s backpack here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro pulls out a navy sweatshirt from the bag, allows the hot tears to spring again as she presses the soft fabric to her face and breathes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s overwhelming. Because where Keith’s closet at the house, and this apartment both carry some of Keith’s signature smell, this is an onslaught. Wood smoke and spice. Heat and something grounding.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Three weeks is long enough to start to forget, to dim the memory of what having Keith taking over her senses is like. She thought she remembered it clearly, what it feels like to hold her, hear her voice, to taste the sriracha Keith puts on everything on her tongue. To smell her shampoo and her skin and her perfume.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She thought she remembered but she didn’t. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her breath trembles on the exhale. The duffle bag on her lap is suddenly a thousand pounds. Her fingers dig harder into the shirt and lock there, clutching hard enough to make her hands begin to shake.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>—-</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe it’s the change of scenery, or maybe it’s just being surrounded by Keith’s smell again. Maybe it has to do with the physical toll the water tower took on her earlier.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Whatever it is, something, somehow, lulls Shiro into a deeper sleep than she’s experienced in quite some time without medication helping her get there.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She wakes on Keith’s unmade bed, head resting on a throw pillow from the couch, an old fleece blanket protecting her from the chill. She must’ve slept for a long time, because the sun is high in the sky outside the window. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The low temperature and lack of proper neck support has left traces in her bones, stiff and heavy when she’s pulled from sleep. Her muscles ache from yesterday.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It takes her a moment to realize what’s woken her, the insistent buzzing coming from somewhere in her creased and ruffled clothes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She shuffles and twists, patting and pawing at the mess of different textiles with the pounding of her heart increasing much too quickly. She’s completely awake, tearing at the wool of her coat where she finds her phone tucked into the hidden pocket on the inside. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her vision is blurry with sleep still, but the little contact profile photo is recognizable just from the burst of color that is reserved for only one person in Shiro’s contacts.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The greeting comes out as more of a grumble once she presses the phone to her ear, and her assistant snorts over the receiver.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I take it I’m waking you?</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Romelle says. Shiro grunts. It’s a blessed two seconds of pretending everything is normal. Shiro has missed Romelle while she’s been gone from work, and it’s nice hearing her voice. But Shiro also knows, her incredible assistant wouldn’t be calling if she didn’t absolutely need to, as things are. Because Shiro told her not to. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Romelle confirms this when she speaks again, her tone set to something softer, ready to cushion a blow. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m sorry, Shiro. I know you said not to contact you, but-</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The woman breathes a short exhale. Shiro knows her too well, can practically see the crease between her brows. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>I tried to fix it myself, and I thought I had it under control but the bastard totally dodged me so I really, really need you to come in. Right now</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shiro feels her heart sink. And in some disgusting kind of way, she’s almost a little happy that for the first time in a long while, that feeling doesn’t have to do with Keith.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What is going on?” She’s already rolling out of bed, with every bone and muscle protesting as she goes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Lotor has called for a stock board meeting. Even I wouldn’t know about it if I didn’t run into Lance down stairs just now when he was getting the conference room ready</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Romelle sounds angry now, and Shiro feels a burst of affection for her assistant. She gets invested, and fired up. It’s meant a great deal for Shiro over the years when things have just been too much, or looked bleak. Romelle has been there to kick her back into gear, and take the wheel where need be.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>It starts in an hour</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Romelle continues, and fury courses through Shiro like a wave. Because she knows Lotor. And if he’s gone out of his way to keep even her assistant in the dark about meeting the board without her, there’s really only one thing that it may be about. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>He’s pushing to have you ousted, Shiro.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>HOHOHO shit's about to hit the fan, y'all. I'm very excited. </p><p>Do you think we've met the kidnapper yet? If yes, who? If no, ANY THEORIES?</p><p>Thank you so much for reading and fueling my torture circus.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Koshu</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The duffel bag lands on the couch with a thump, and it’s loud in the stillness of her apartment. The place feels strangely hollow. Like a shell of what it used to be, empty even if it’s technically still fully furnished. Even if so many of her things remain here.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter is Keith POV wooo</p><p>WARNINGS:<br/>This chap contains torture with blood and injury, as well as non consensual drug use. Don't read if you can't deal!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Koshu, type: Green</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Not widely known, is the long established art of japanese wine making. You will rarely stumble upon these wines in the western world. But in the prefecture of Yamanashi, Japan, you’ll come to find these rose gold colored grapes to have flourished for the past thousand years or so. Though delicate looking, this aesthetically pleasing grape has a thick skin that requires heavy rainfall in their growing season. The result is an elegant, crisp wine with a protruding acidity.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>~*~</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The signals drag by too slowly, loud and screechy in the shitty Bluetooth speaker taped to the dashboard. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Four, five signals now. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She reaches to end the call. It was probably stupid anyway, it’s not like her friends will-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
  </em>
  <span>Keith</span>
  <em>
    <span>?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Naturally, when she’s decided she doesn’t even want Hunk to answer is when he decides to realize his phone is ringing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She sinks back into her seat, deflating from whatever burst of anxiety that hit her just now. It’s good to hear his voice. “Hey, big guy.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
  </em>
  <span>How are you doing man</span>
  <em>
    <span>?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Before she can answer, she hears Lance’s voice somewhere not too far away. “</span>
  </em>
  <span>Is that Keith? Did she die? Is that why she’s calling at seven thirty on a Monday morning, is she dead</span>
  <em>
    <span>?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith snorts. “Say hi to him for me. Tell him I miss him.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
  </em>
  <span>She says hi!</span>
  <em>
    <span>” Hunk doesn’t miss a beat. Keith doesn’t need a video call to see Lance’s sleepy face twist. “</span>
  </em>
  <span>She misses you</span>
  <em>
    <span>.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There’s a sound of hurried shuffling, something being knocked over. Then Lance is there, right at the receiver. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
  </em>
  <span>Look Keith if you’re under any kind of threat right now, say the word milkshake. Milk-shake. You hear me</span>
  <em>
    <span>?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith laughs. It’s too early for this but it’s been weeks since she’s laughed at anything but a collection of stupid commercials on YouTube she got caught up in at the motel a few nights back. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>So she laughs, part because Lance’s voice getting all high and squeaky is amusing. Part because she’s feeling generous, and wants her friend to know she appreciates his antics even if she’ll never say those words out loud.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And part of it is this windy, fresh relief.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s good to know she can disappear and her friends won’t treat her differently for it. That even after leaving them with nothing but sparse contact over text for over two weeks, with no explanation or way for them to help, they’re still the same.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It makes the familiar buildings coming into view down the road a little less daunting. A little more friendly, suddenly.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Don’t you have a job to get to?” She bypasses the entirety of Lance’s ramble. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He makes a noise Keith doesn’t know quite how to translate, and a moment later she’s back in Hunk’s ear.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
  </em>
  <span>He’s gonna get you for that</span>
  <em>
    <span>.” Her friend says, a warm smile in his voice. “</span>
  </em>
  <span>You’re not actually calling to tell us you’ve crossed into the afterlife are you</span>
  <em>
    <span>?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Nah,” Keith sips her piss-warm coffee, holds the paper cup just this side of too tightly. “Not this time, anyway.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Not funny, dude.” Hunk scolds. “How’s your impromptu adventure treating you? Where are you now?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’d say I’m about thirty blocks from where you are.” Keith looks out over Longfellow Bridge coming up ahead, at the river reflecting a blue sky and the color shifting trees lining the riverbank on the other side. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It seems she’s chosen a good day to get back, judging by the big pools of rain water filling every hollow in the ground still. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
  </em>
  <span>You’re back in town</span>
  <em>
    <span>?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There’s no attempt to hide the excitement in his voice, and it blooms a warmth in Keith.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She never had friends like this, growing up.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But with the question she knows there’s more. A bunch of other questions she isn’t sure how to answer yet.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yeah.” She says. “Guess I am.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The early sun stings in her eyes as she crosses the bridge. The call is silent for a longer stretch of time than she expected, with Hunk gathering his words.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Do you want to talk about it?” He settles on.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I-“ Keith sets her jaw, tongue gone stiff in her mouth just as always. It’s a roadblock she’s learned to deal with, mostly. But it’s still there to get past.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
  </em>
  <span>You don’t gotta, Keith.</span>
  <em>
    <span>”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I know that.” It comes out a little snappy, and she hopes her friend understands. She draws for a long breath. “Have you talked to her at all?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
  </em>
  <span>Mnah</span>
  <em>
    <span>,” Keith holds that breath. “</span>
  </em>
  <span>She only called once after we told her you weren’t talking to us. But Keith</span>
  <em>
    <span>-“</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hunk pauses again, and Keith’s heart stutters.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
  </em>
  <span>She didn’t sound good, man. She really misses you</span>
  <em>
    <span>.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The stutter lands in an ache.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m going to go see her. Today. I’ll go to her office.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Saying it out loud will make her have to. That is how it works, right?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hunk hums.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
  </em>
  <span>So what are you gonna say</span>
  <em>
    <span>?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>—-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The duffel bag lands on the couch with a thump, and it’s loud in the stillness of her apartment. The place feels strangely hollow. Like a shell of what it used to be, empty even if it’s technically still fully furnished. Even if so many of her things remain here. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’d taken an embarrassingly long time to even get herself in here. To just get out of that car and step through the door.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was symbolic in a way she didn’t want to admit.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Because once she walked in here, she knew, she’d know. Her scattered feelings would fall into their right slots. She’d know what she wants to do. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was a terrifying thought.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>This place, this apartment, it’s been her home for a long time. The longest she’s ever lived in one place, anyway. But it was more than that. When she shut that heavy door behind her and kicked her shoes off to feel the woven rug under her feet, it was like she softened. Like leather does with wear, her limbs and her mind would start to bend more easily, relax and lean into its own give.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>This was her fortress. Her solitary bubble where she allowed herself to truly breathe.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And she couldn’t decide what was more frightening; coming back to feel that feeling again, or find that it isn’t there anymore.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>To realize that spell-like comfort no longer has a place within these walls. That it’s moved elsewhere.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But she’s here now, after forty five minutes in a freezing car, staring at the door as if it carried the answer to all her life’s questions.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe it did, in a way.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She shakes her head to herself. When did she become this melodramatic, anyway?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Of course, she knows the answer to that. Just as she knows now, that her place of belonging isn’t contained by walls or rugs or the comfort of her bed, anymore. It walks and talks and talks about bottles of wine as if they were exquisite paintings. It has large and strong hands that can still hold her delicately. Smells like summer rain even when the world is dry and cold.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her heart pounds and the coffee cup threatens to topple over when a shaking hand sets it down. She’s never been the crying kind. But it washes over her like a wave of icy water, the urge. There’s an emptiness in this space and she is so torn.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Part of her hoped she could fall into this couch, slink back into what her life used to be. To not have to adapt to the fact it’s changed. That her heart changed. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She changed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But she aches also with a stupid longing. She misses it so fucking much, that comfort and relief. But it’s not here and she craves it. Needs it, even.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>With a curse muttered under her breath, and a rising feeling of surrender swirling at the pit of her stomach, Keith adjusts the backpack on her shoulder, turns on her heels, and leaves the apartment and it’s loud speaking emptiness behind.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>—-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No tears. No attachment. No romance.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was a lot easier to not be in love. She has all these things she never asked for now, and can’t even find it in herself to want to get out. Two weeks on the road didn’t smoothie out a single one of the grooves and dents Shiro created on her steel surface. Didn’t mend the breaks in her armor.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Two weeks of driving aimlessly, stopping only when she needed to, blasting all the good songs in that shitty speaker. Bumpy country roads. Big dusty highways. Pitch black nights in the woods and raindrops breaking the surface of a road side lake.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It kept her calm, mellow enough. But it didn’t help the way it used to.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Difference is, she never had the intention of coming back before. She’s been running when things got bad since she was a kid. Sometimes she was caught and dragged back. Sometimes she wasn’t. But she never set out to return willingly. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She gave up early on the dream of a family, of having anyone in her life to lean on. No one to need her, no one she would need.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That is, until two of her college housemates proved themselves willing and able. It was the strangest experience. She provided a guy with a bleeding and swollen nose only days after moving into the apartment. Not because he did anything much, Keith was the one to pick a fight. If she threw the first punch, the others would know. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It didn’t work on everyone.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith remembers it vividly, the first time the big dude with the headband stepped between her and the guy she first shared a room with. How fucking furious she’d been because she didn’t want or need some dude-bro to save her. How he’d said “Look that’s fine, but if you hit him with that thing-“ he gestured to the teflon pan clutched in her grip, the first thing she got her hands on. “-not only are you probably out of a place to live but we’ll also lose our only decent pancake pan and I just can’t let you do that.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It has taken effort on Hunk’s part, and a rearrangement where Keith and Hunk’s roommate switched rooms, for any kind of friendship to bloom. But it did, eventually. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Lance came around sometime in the second semester, an annoying kid with too long limbs and a sense of humor Keith would take a long time to understand.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She’d allowed them in, slowly and carefully. She always had friends, of some sort. Other foster kids looking out for each other, people from her dance groups. But they were never more than shallow. Someone to tick off the hours of the day with sometimes, contacts to help make ends meet. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>This was very different. Hunk and Lance were warm, and cared about her from early on. They confided in her, shared their problems and their fears and sat through all nighters before exams with her. They both came to her with their budding feelings for each other in their second year. She watched them grow so much closer but she never felt their friendship falter. She got to tease them endlessly once they got together, and they happily took the beating. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Lance set her up on her first date. Hunk was there ten weeks later when it went up in flames.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Those two changed her. Opened her up in whatever way she needed to function socially. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Without them, she wouldn’t have been ready for the onslaught of feelings the accomplished author with the bad leg that stumbled into her office stirred up in her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That memory too, clear as day, tugs on her heart. Shiro was so cute, bulky and grumpy and in pain but still blushing and forgetting how to function, staring at Keith with wide silver eyes.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith slams the car door closed, an energy building in her with every step away from the parking lot, for every foot closer to the towering building she’s come to know closely over the past years. When she nears the entrance, there’s almost a skip in her step.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She’s doing this. She’s back and she’s doing this. She’ll convince Shiro if she needs to, they’ll work it out. She didn’t see before, but she does now. With the separation and the distance, the gut-punch of nothing that her empty apartment brought her, she understands. Or accepts, is perhaps the right word.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There’s no reason left for her to back into a corner like a threatened animal. No reason for her to keep her guard up or run away. The sacred lines and limits she’s set for herself, and for Shiro, they were there to keep a distance. She told herself it was who she was, that she valued her independence and wouldn’t have anyone poke around in her private business. No one to take her over.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But Shiro never tried to take her over. All that clumsy, silly in love woman ever did were attempts to erase the lines, to connect the two of them. To intertwine. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She didn’t do it in the best way, and she isn’t perfect, but that seems meaningless now. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Keith never wanted perfect.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She catches her own reflection in the revolving door. Her hair is a mess, nose red from the cold. But the grin stretching her lips, the shameless expression of the realization dawning upon her as she hurries past sleepy office workers to the front desk, that part she can't wait to share.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>—-</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>A door opens and closes somewhere. It echoes, and she can’t tell how far it is, but she’s learned the sound never bodes well for her. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The numbness comes and goes, sometimes it’s enough to let her drift off for a while. She’s foggy, from lack of proper sleep and from all the things that hurt. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything hurts.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It hurts like a </span>
  <em>
    <span>bitch</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and she’s angry. She’s so angry, she can feel it deep in her bones even after she grew too tired to let her rage manifest.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’s angry that she’s here. That she let herself end up here. She’s angry with how human she is, how she hurts and how she bleeds. She’s angry with how she’s supposed to be a professional on pain but can’t do </span>
  <em>
    <span>shit</span>
  </em>
  <span> about her own. Hates how she can’t inflict any pain where she’d like to.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’s so fucking mad about how her fear spikes at the sound of that fucking door.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>For what must be the thousandth time Keith looks around the little room, at the rough concrete wall and it’s powder blue paint, the tiled floor. There are water pipes and a sink, no windows, a vent. Her running theory is that it’s supposed to be a laundry room.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The flat lamps on the ceiling are cold and too bright. The browning blood smears look obscene on the white tile.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s so ugly, all of it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’s tried not to look where it hurts, because maybe if she looks too closely she’ll process the damage and make it feel worse. But she’s been bruised and broken before, knows the dull ache of a broken bone kept still, the sharp pain when you disturb it. She’s well versed with the pulsing bruises, the itch of a healing wound.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Had she been an idiot to think making a life for herself would ever work out? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Was she just supposed to be hurting, always?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tears spring to her eyes again, and she’s almost surprised she’s still able to produce them at all. They sting coming down her cheek, curling over her jaw and following the dried tracks of blood down her chin.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The sobbing makes everything hurt more, but she can’t control how they shake her where she sits. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’s bruised from sitting on the hard floor, for what must be multiple days now. On her lap lies the hands she won’t look at, cold on bare thighs and drawn together with zip ties. The plastic digs and cuts into her skin. So does the belt at her waist that ties her to the pipe on the wall behind her. The damn thing doesn’t allow for her to lie down, and digs uncomfortably into her back when she leans against the wall.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Every which way, finding comfort is impossible.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The option of bashing the back of her skull against the wall hard enough to knock herself out has started to become tempting, in the past few hours. She’s so tired her vision is blurry, and she isn’t sure she could speak if she wanted to. Everything is slow like she stuck her head in a jar of syrup. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She hangs her head, feels the drip of tears on her swollen hands, and tries to listen.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s hard to hear here, over the thrum of the ventilation, through thick walls and a locked door. But every once in a while she’ll pick up on something. An item dropping to the floor, the murmur of a voice. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When she doesn’t hear anything, she drifts to and from, for a while.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She only shakes out of it when a sound she knows makes her twitch, forces her body to curl against the wall whether she wills it to or not. Slow, measured footsteps approaching her makeshift cell.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Keith can taste her heart in her throat, and she wants to scream with how much that pisses her off. She’s scared, more than she’s ever been, and it’s unfathomable how much that makes her boil.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She can feel her body try to wake up, to get back to alert and protect itself. But there’s no energy, no strength for even panicked adrenaline to take from now. The world fades in and out with the current of her brain and body trying to make things work, blackened tunnel vision narrowing and widening every other breath in an erratic nonsense pattern that makes her feel like she’s on a carousel.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Suddenly there’s leather loafers poking at her bruised knee, calling her attention.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Strong fingers thread through the rats nest that must’ve become of her hair by now, and she expects them to force her head back, to bend her every which way just to make her stiff neck shift to their wishes. But they don’t, this time. They just hold there, curling against her sore scalp like a reminder.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The shiny shoe prodding at her bruises lifts, following the line of her leg. Keith freezes solid, bracing herself when the patterned sole touches the back of her hand.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She screams when it presses down on broken bones.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s a voice, she knows there’s a voice. It’s there somewhere in the static, bouncing around in her head. But she can’t hear the words, not even when the pressure falls back from her bound hands. It’s just a murmur.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’s squeezed her eyes shut, dizzy from her fucked vision and worse from the new spike of pain shooting through her bones.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Like a rag doll she can’t do much but let the hands on her touch and grab and shift her around as they like. She’s all out of fight. She thinks maybe the voice tells her so, too.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Gloved fingers trace the tear streaks on her cheeks, press and scratch at the still fresh wound on the right side just to make Keith squirm and tremble. She feels the fragile scab crack under the touch, hot blood mixing with salty tears. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Those fingers keep playing there, rubbing in the bloody mess until they decide to slide down, down to the right seam of Keith’s closed mouth. She smells the fresh blood right under her nose, feels a leather clad fingertip smear the mess over her lips like a perverse replacement for the lipstick she came her wearing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A sharp heel digging into her thigh has her mouth falling open on a gasp, and those fingers shove past her teeth before she can even draw for breath. The ones in her hair wrenches her head back, and she feels the shadow of a body blocking the bright lights from her face.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Keith gags, throat convulsing around long, blood drenched fingers pressing hard against the back of her tongue and stretching her lips wide enough to tear. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>God, fuck, it </span>
  <em>
    <span>hurts</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The reflex to vomit at the metallic and salty taste of blood sliding down her throat, the intrusion and the pain is almost too much. She feels faint. She can’t take this, it’s everywhere, it-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A sharp slap to her left cheek brings her back. It can’t have been more than a few moments, the blood still fresh on her mouth and the split in her lip stinging and new. But there’s no touch on her now, nothing but a rough wall cushioning her head.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A voice that sounds as if it comes from under water is speaking to her, tells her to open her eyes. But she doesn’t want to.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t want to, but the hard point of a polished shoe digging into her abdomen makes the demand hard to ignore.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In front of her are tanned arms, dark clothes. She knows that skin is full of bad scars but with her swimming vision she can’t see. Can’t focus her eyes unless she really tries.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Besides, it’s not the scars or the skin or the arms or the clothes that draw her attention, but the thing pinched between the fingers on one of those gloved hands. The one not covered in her blood.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It takes her a moment. One she’s given, by the hand staying perfectly still right in front of her face. And it’s like her body knows before her brain does, jerking back closer to the wall.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The syringe gleams like it’s trying to speak.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Keith screamed her voice to shreds on the first day, when the hands in front of her took two of her fingers and bent them back further than they could ever go. The bones snapped like pretzel sticks, and Keith tore her lungs apart.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She never begged in her </span>
  <em>
    <span>life</span>
  </em>
  <span>, not even then. But, god-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Please-“</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>-she will now.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Shit-</span>
  </em>
  <span> please, no-“ her voice is foreign in her own ears, raspy and rough like the rusted blade of an old hacksaw.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t feel it when the needle pierces her skin, can’t even will her limbs to put up the fight she needs. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>On her empty stomach and with the blood already rushing through her veins, the effects are almost immediate. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The escape of dozy half unconsciousness and any further actual unconsciousness vanishes, in the blink of an eye. Her already rapid heart pounds faster, knocks so hard against her rib cage she fears it might break.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She can see the bones cracking under the pressure, can feel it already.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She can feel everything. It’s the same but it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>more</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It’s like every agonized cell in her body suddenly has a mind that of its own but it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>her </span>
  </em>
  <span>mind and she can’t-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Much clearer now, isn’t it?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The familiar voice is out of the water, still not clear but reaching Keith well enough. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Keith liked it better when she couldn’t hear. She doesn’t like this voice. She hates this voice. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A shrill digital alarm and the buzz of a phone trapped in fitted pants shakes the air, makes her skin vibrate and she wants it quiet - needs it gone, it has to—</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Gloves slip from long fingers, landing on the tile with a thud that shouldn’t be that audible but it was and what the fuck </span>
  <em>
    <span>what the fuck-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A disappointed hum, fingertips tapping on a glass screen. Keith can feel the hairs on her arms move when she breathes so heavy down on them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It gets to be that time again,” the voice speaks again, and Keith can’t tell if she’s supposed to listen, if she’s the one being talked to. She tilts her head up to search the handsome features that hurts to look at, and finds sharp eyes watching her. A warm, naked finger curls under her chin, tender in a mocking way. “Things to do, places to be.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Keith wants to bite the manicured finger clean off the hand as it withdraws. Maybe she snaps her teeth at it, because something sparks a quiet laugh from the smiling mouth above.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Painfully familiar eyes glitter when Keith meets them, and somehow that is so much worse than all the rest. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because when Shiro looked at her, it was polished silver. It was the back of a raindrop caught by the sun, and it was warm.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her sister always looked at Keith in quite the opposite way.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Does it hurt, just to be awake?” The woman wearing Shiro’s face but not her eyes asks, with a strange sense of wonder lacing her tone. Keith shivers. “Is everything heightened? Can you feel the fight the body puts up even when you don’t want it to?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Keith doesn’t answer. She never does.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>At first, it pissed Kuri off, made her put effort into drawing sound and voice from the breaking body on her floor. But now, she seems to have found her peace with it. Like she doesn’t need Keith to tell her how it hurts, like she did in the beginning.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She scoffs, and shoves Keith’s head back before she swipes her gloves off the floor and stands tall.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’ll be back for you later.” she says, almost sweetly. But it’s like she isn’t talking to Keith at all. Like she isn’t a person. “You enjoy your… </span>
  <em>
    <span>rush</span>
  </em>
  <span>, while I’m gone, yeah?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The door slides shut and it probably isn’t loud, but in the sudden silence the sound echoes in Keith’s skull like church bells. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>haaah, are you surprised?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Sémillon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Shiro may finally be catching up, even though her path is not the most straight and narrow.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Sémillon, </b>
  <b>
    <em>type: Green</em>
  </b>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The Sémillon has a thick skin, turns golden before its harvest, and is diverse on the battlefield that is winemaking. From the famous sweet wines of Sauternes, France, to the crisp and dry of Hunter Valley, Australia, the Sémillon is the key to many of the great wines in this world.</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>~*~</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a unique kind of struggle, when the body pulls and aches to move faster when it can’t. It’s disturbingly unsatisfying to wish to marsh into a building, demanding and determined, and be held back by a useless leg and a cane clinking on the stone tile.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s in moments like these she misses wearing heels. They were never comfortable and aesthetically, they didn’t do much for her. But when a 5,11 tall woman put on 4 inch heels, people took notice. It’s hard to look down on a woman you literally cannot look down on.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But maybe just the fury rolling in waves from her now will be enough.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>After everything, two weeks locked away and the past few of living in a horror story of her own design, bursting into a lobby full of people rattles her more than she was prepared for. She loses some of her momentum, when the whir of moving bodies and voices locks onto her senses.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a strangely human feeling that she got unused to.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She follows the straight line of white tile that leads to the reception, and catches one of the two receptionist’s eye before she’s even halfway.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Miss Shirogane, you’re back!” Coran beams at her, but schools his features quickly when Shiro comes close enough. He’s known her a long time, and can likely see she isn’t in the mood for pleasantries.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She can appreciate that.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t have my keycard.” she says, perhaps too broot. But she doesn’t have the time, capacity, or willpower to put the mask on. Everything vibrates in and around her, with fear and with stress and anger that she never seems to catch a moment to sort through.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Coran nods so hard his curled mustache bobs on his lip, and presses a button behind his counter. The little electronic gate opens, and Shiro nods her thanks as she hurries past it and toward the elevators.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a couple of companies occupying the building, but on the top seven floors is where her agency has done its business for the past four years or so. It was thrilling then, to move into that space. In the middle of town, in a newly renovated space with enough room to keep expanding.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She had just gone into partnership with Daibazaal then, knowing there was a risk in doing so. It had worked just fine for the first two years.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro’s knuckles turn white where she grips the handle of her cane, and she watches the gold rimmed numbers light up for every floor she passes. It’s a small blessing that nobody joins her, leaving her to scowl and mutter curses and try not to kick a dent into the brass plating lining the elevator walls.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The little ping signalling her arrival on the 30’th floor echoes loud in her head, and she feels the barely there gust of wind when the doors slide open to reveal a place she didn’t even know he missed.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s only a second before Romelle comes dashing for her, arms full of files and loose documents. Her eyes are wild and angry, cheeks flushed. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro has missed her.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Conference room F. Come on.” Her assistant doesn’t bother to greet her, doesn’t so much as scan Shiro’s appearance before turning on her heel for Shiro to follow. Romelle has always had an issue with Lotor, much like many other fiery women who have done him the dishonor of turning him down. Just like he did with Keith, he was persistent, to the point of Romelle throwing a stapler for his head. It had been a challenge to make the attempted assault go away with a scorned Lotor on the other end, but Shiro had taken care of it. And then never once let him into her office during Romelle’s working hours again.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Now, Romelle is seething where she walks a couple of paces in front of Shiro, and it’s calming in a way. She always had an ability to find calm around temper and outward acting behaviors, even when she’s on the verge of screaming herself.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>People have called it a natural leadership quality, but-</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m so glad you made it. If you hadn’t I just might have thrown the son of a bitch out the window.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>-Shiro figures she learned it through practise. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Takashi Shirogane was much too young to understand, when her parents realized something wasn’t right with one of their twins. The child would scream and cry when she didn’t get her way, when she was hungry, or startled.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>But when she fell and hit her head so hard it bled, there wasn’t much reaction. It was there from the beginning, something lacking in how their child acted. And as the twins grew older, it only became more apparent all the while. Shiro wasn’t old enough to engage or understand the process, wouldn’t remember the countless visits to doctors offices and specialists as she grew older. Neither would her sister.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>But just before their second summer, the diagnosis was clear, and the Shiroganes’ all started to adapt.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro’s first memory related to it all is from Christmas, months before their third birthday. They were on the couch, she and her sister. They were watching cartoons, bellies full of food and newly acquired stuffed animals on each of their laps. Shiro got a koala bear, and she named him Toto. Kuri’s was a puppy, a round and squishy thing with a silky soft brown coat. It had a little bowtie. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Kuri kept shifting in her seat, whining quietly to herself. Shiro didn’t hear it at first, too engrossed in the colorful characters getting into trouble on the TV screen. It wasn’t until Kuri nudged her with her elbow that Shiro turned to look at her sister, and saw her face was red and blotchy. She was tugging on the overalls she always wore, a pearl of sweat or tears hanging off the tip of her nose.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“S’too hot!” Kuri muttered into her collar, and started to pull harder on her clothes. But Shiro knew Kuri couldn’t take her things off, mom and dad told them so very firmly. Many times! She grabbed for her sisters hands, and they were much warmer than her own. She tried to make Kuri stop.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Kuri couldn’t take anything off.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>But Kuri was distressed, too warm and quickly becoming frantic with Shiro trying to hold her still. She started thrashing, screaming. It sent Shiro into a panic. She started crying, too. She couldn’t let Kuri take her stuff off. Never ever when mom or dad weren’t in the room.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>With an especially hard shove from a screaming Kuri, Shiro felt herself falling. There was a burst of pain, and she started to cry harder. Her nose throbbed where she’d hit it on the coffee table, and she screamed so hard her lungs hurt. In a flurry of worried voices and movements, their mother was there, holding Shiro’s face in her palms. But Shiro heard her sisters' cries behind her, and shook her head in her mother’s grasp. She tried to turn around, to point to where Kuri was still sitting on the couch.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>When their mom declared her not badly injured, her focus finally shifted. She sat on the couch, fussing over Kuri as she began to unzip the overalls and mumbling apologies to her sweaty and upset little daughter.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro sat on the couch and watched them. Kuri looked down at her, her face finally still. She looked a little funny, in her special clothes and padded helmet. But they were important.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Because Shiro’s sister couldn’t feel pain, the doctors said. She needed help, support, so that she wouldn’t get hurt.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>—</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The sisters grew up close, and Shiro’s protective streak remained throughout their childhood. In retrospect, perhaps her constant watching eye on her sister was part of what pushed her in the direction she went. Kuri was always curious, and a little adventurous.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>But with age she started to become reckless.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro understood. It wasn’t so easy to learn to fear the fall, if the landing wouldn’t hurt you. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Of course, Kuri’s near endless stream of stunts did hurt her. She just couldn’t feel it.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>By the time they were in their teens, Shiro’s identical twin and her were easily distinguishable just by the number of scars on Kuri’s hands and the constant presence of one bandage or another. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro was constantly worried, watching over her sister and trying her best to keep her out of trouble. Her attempts didn’t seem to do much of a difference as they grew older, though. She started trying to do what she could to prevent things.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Never in her life had she seen a man in such distress as when she told coach junior year she was quitting the swim team.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It wasn’t that she really wanted to quit. She loved swimming, and she was good at it. But Kuri injured herself again that week, and Shiro knew the only way to keep her sister off the team was to quit herself. They had always been a package deal.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Kuri was furious when she found out, weeks later, that Shiro had lied when she said she quit to focus on her grades. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro was waiting for her after school, talking to Adam about prom and looking through dresses a magazine they had laid out on the roof of Shiro’s car, when Kuri came barreling up to them in the parking lot. Her face was red, eyes wild and angry, and she shoved Shiro the second she got close enough.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro had stumbled straight into her girlfriend, and they both fell on the concrete. She was yelling and spitting curses - until she noticed Shiro wasn’t listening. Instead, Shiro was crouched over where Adam was hissing through pained breaths on the ground. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Adam broke her wrist catching their fall. And while it hadn’t been Kuri’s intention to hurt anyone that way, that moment made something change in her. Shiro was too caught up in being worried for her girlfriend, and angry at her sister, to notice it until later. But even then it was subtle, how Kuri seemed fascinated with Adam’s injury.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It was after that, that Kuri started getting into fights.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro and their parents figured it was a way of further rebelling, and taking out her anger over not doing sports anymore. They tried telling her there was nothing stopping her from rejoining the team without Shiro, but she didn’t want to. She wasn’t interested in swimming anymore, she said.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The fights were mostly far apart, and not once did she get caught or called out at school. But Shiro knew, when her sister got home the previous night with her knuckles bruised, high on endorphins, and she saw the way Kuri watched Daniel Seeley grimace every time he moved. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Kuri also seemed to develop an inappropriate interest in all and any pain her twin suffered, be it physical or psychological. She would prod and poke and ask questions until Shiro would lose her patience and kick her out of her room.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Just before their high school graduation, she agreed to go to therapy. It took a lot of convincing, and a long night of Shiro crying outside Kuri’s closed bedroom door, for Kuri to finally cave. But once she started, it seemed to work. Kuri liked her therapist, took her treatment seriously. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Kuri graduated with perfect grades, and they both went to college in the fall just like planned. Kuri got into medical school, and became a pediatrician. After all her years of practice, she had a knack for non-verbal communication, especially in terms of pain and discomfort. Working with young children only seemed fitting.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>By the time she graduated, the dark tendencies Kuri Shirogane had shown at the end of high school were nothing but an unpleasant memory, and the sisters remained as close as they’d ever been.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>—-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a murmur of voices behind the locked door, and Romelle doesn’t waste a second before she starts banging her fist on the polished wood. Papers go flying from her arms.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Good grief, where is the fire?” A pudgy little man opens the door, bushy brows furrowed in annoyance. “Young lady-“</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Mr. Barasa.” Shiro says, stepping up behind her assistant with a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. Her voice is stern and cold, and it’s clear that her investor didn’t count on her coming here when his jaw seems to slacken at the sight of her. “It is good to see you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” the little man collects himself quickly, and steps back to let the two women past. “Lovely to see you as well, miss Shirogane.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro doesn’t spare him another glance. Romelle scurries into the room down the long conference table, while Shiro takes in the number of people collected here. They’re staring, some wide eyed in surprise, others collected with their well crafted poker faces in place.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>At the end of the table, Lotor has gone still where he stands.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I heard there was an urgent meeting.” Shiro speaks directly to the man across the room, sees the angry little twinge he tries to hide. “My invitation must have gotten lost in the system. Luckily, Romelle here has eyes and ears in quite many places.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She suppresses the urge to smile when she catches her assistant sticking her tongue out at Lotor like a petulant child. It’s alright, Romelle can do as she likes. The only important thing is that Shiro doesn’t lose her composure. She stalks up to the nearest chair, and reaches over Mrs. Nabih’s shoulder to get at the paper sitting on the table in front of each participant.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s on the agenda?” She asks, mildly sarcastic. She skims through the document while she walks, slowly and too close for comfort along the backs of everyone’s chairs until she reaches one that is vacant. “Ah, right. We’re looking to have me ousted.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro sinks into the seat, and lets the paper fall and slide away on the table. She leans back, nails clicking on the hard arm rests. “Let’s hear it then. Tell the room how I’m no longer capable of running my company.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lotor glares, and Shiro cocks her head to the side with a provocative little smile. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Go on, we’re all ears here.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The man probably appears collected, to those in here who haven’t spent as much time analyzing him as Shiro has. But she sees it, the redness creeping up his neck under the crisp collar. The set of his jaw and shoulders.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And she knows that Lotor knows he’s being </span>
  <em>
    <span>seen</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s strangely easy, slipping back into the persona she’s crafted for her work only. How simple it is to feed on the anger and hopelessness that eats away at her otherwise and channel it someplace. It’s freeing.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Empowering.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the back of her mind, she’s trembling. Longing to get out and not waste her time on a company issue when Keith is in danger. But it’s like her mind has found a way to disconnect, just a little. To give herself some breathing room because she is rationally perfectly aware that she has no more or less control of the situation depending on what she’s doing, will probably only suffer from sitting another day waiting.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>This will help her find some strength.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Very well,” Lotor’s voice is perfectly level, and Shiro is a little surprised. Part of her thought her appearance would be enough. That this would be it. “As you are all aware, Miss Shirogane has failed to participate in a single point of business in the past three weeks.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The room is silent. Outside the window, a wind howls.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“A short period of time to assess for something as drastic as an ousting, I’m sure most of you might think.” He continues, quickly sliding into his metaphorical public speaker shoes. “But this is hardly the first time that Shirogane has gone AWOL right in a sensitive time. Christmas is coming up and the company is under a lot of pressure. There’s a handful of big releases in the next few weeks, all of which need careful supervision and attention. Something that Shirogane has failed to provide.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro keeps her expression level, unphased. She can all but feel her assistant going feral a few feet behind her.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Not only has she neglected her work by staying at home, but she has also failed to assign a replacement. A risky, unprofessional choice that is not the first time we see from her.” Lotor looks her straight in the eye then, a challenge glinting there.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro doesn’t rise to the bait.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re here to discuss today, whether a president who has tendencies to disappear without a word, is something we can afford keeping on board. We will overlook her past inconsistencies as well as other decisions and courses of action Miss Shirogane has taken in the past four years.” Lotor takes a seat on his end of the table. He smiles. “We will then take a vote on whether she should be ousted, effective immediately.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>—-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The meeting drags. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro will admit, her choices in times of personal distress have not been the most professional. It’s true she doesn’t always have the health of her company at the forefront of her mind. It’s a hefty weight on Lotor’s side of the scale.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But by the end of it, nearly three hours later, there’s a good number of names in her corner. She has met their concerns with an open mind, and a transparency that she’s always tried to uphold ever since starting the company in the first place. She has suggested they look into assigning a Vice President, something she’s been reluctant to do before.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s been a long time since keeping the full control was truly that important to Shiro. It’s simply one of those things that have not come to pass. But she’s perfectly willing to change that, now.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>This seems to be greatly appreciated, and the simple suggestion seems to deflate the entirety of Lotor’s far out there motion. The mere fact that a more structured line of authority wasn’t suggested before the ousting steals much credibility from Lotor’s motive.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro can see how it makes his blood boil underneath his picture perfect skin, and she revels in it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Romelle and she are the first to leave, bidding all participants goodbye and thanking them for a productive meeting before slipping out the door.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Romelle, impressively, keeps face almost the entire way to their office. She’s a few paces out the elevator doors when she turns on her heel and throws her arms over Shiro’s shoulders.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You were </span>
  <em>
    <span>amazing</span>
  </em>
  <span> in there!” She beams when she pulls back from the sudden embrace. “Not gonna lie, I was a little scared there for a while. I’m glad you made it.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro doesn’t have much to say to that, drained now that it’s over. She gives Romelle’s shoulder an appreciative squeeze, and hopes it’ll be enough for now.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>If it isn’t, Romelle doesn’t show it. She disappears down the hall to fetch some tea, with a little skip in her step.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It leaves Shiro to breathe in her surroundings by herself, which is something she appreciates. It’s only been a couple of weeks since she’s been here, and nothing has really changed, but still somehow it seems alien.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She walks slowly through Romelle’s space, takes in the vibrant plants and trinkets filling the room. At the door to her own office, she traces the intricate moldings on the frame with her fingers. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Carved into the door and filled in with gold paint, she reads her own name.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Inside, it smells of books and cedar wood candles. It’s clean and tidy, courtesy of her wonderful assistant. She takes a seat on the cool, brown Chesterfield couch, and takes a long breath.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Now that the moment of distraction is over, the sharp, piercing feeling returns to her lungs. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Across the room, the old bar cart and its contents twinkle invitingly, and it stings. The knowledge of the grip the numbing substances has on her stings. Suddenly quitting stings more. Her leg throbs and so does her head, everything aches and she’s been nauseous for hours now. It was easy enough to ignore with the adrenaline and anger taking the helm, but now it seems to be swallowing her already.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s been twenty four hours without Vicodin, longer than she’s gone since before Keith went away. Something echoes empty and the void is only pain.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She hates how cliche it is. The addict quitting cold turkey and suffering the consequences.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The crystal carafes glitter with varying contents of dark amber and gold, and it’s like they’re staring back as hard as Shiro is staring at them.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s an internal sigh of relief, when Romelle walks through the door. She hands Shiro a steaming mug of flowery rooibos, and flops onto the other end of the couch with a grunt.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Geez Louise that was enough excitement for… the rest of my life, probably.” She says, practically melting into her seat. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s nearly funny, how this if anything has been a break from all the unwanted excitement in Shiro’s life in the past few days.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And better yet that she can’t tell Romelle this.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro doesn’t speak. She sips her tea, and tries to focus on breathing. Romelle rambles on.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“- and when he came in Monday morning looking for you I could feel he was up to something! But then he left so quickly and I had work to do so I filtered it out-“ the tea sloshes in Romelle’s mug. “It was like he was happy to see you weren’t back at work yet and that really pissed me off-“</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Hot tea spills over Shiro’s loafers.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It probably burns. She doesn’t feel it. Suddenly, she doesn’t feel much of anything. She isn’t even breathing anymore.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Romelle’s voice sounds far away, calling her name. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She’s always considered Lotor a bit of a dilemma. They’ve had plenty of disagreements, a long line of personal and professional disputes. He’s always been a pain. But somehow, there’s been a kind of friendship there. Or at least, Shiro always felt there was. The man would drive her crazy, but never forget her birthday. He would file a motion to gain more power in her company, but also ask her opinion on other investments.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Perhaps he’s got her fooled all this time. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Hunk said he’d talked to Keith early Monday morning. That she was going to find Shiro, go to her office. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Wednesday, Shiro found the first message on her porch. Lotor came by, for no good reason, that same afternoon. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I understand your little spark plug walked out on you, is it so</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He said it was about the coming board election but he lied.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Audacious thing like that, it was only a matter of time don’t you think</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Did he come just to see for himself the impact of his actions? Shiro didn’t follow him to the door when he left, he could easily have gotten his hands on Shiro’s medication. She was so out of it then, he might as well have stolen it right from under her nose in her office.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He’s the one person with an agenda that would benefit from just keeping Shiro in tatters. No ransom, no clear demands. Only a steady stream of torture and stress to break and disorient her. And quickly, at that.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>If Lotor was here Monday morning, when Keith came here—</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She can’t so much as recall getting into the elevator in the first place, but when it dings to signal her arrival, it’s like the lights turn back on around her. She’s breathing heavily, cornflower and rose lingering in her mouth from the tea that also stains the floor beneath her feet. It squelches when she walks, just a little.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a short stretch of corridor, but it seems to never end. It reminds her of the dreams she’s had since Keith left, where she’s run with pain and without, chasing smoke.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The door to conference room F is still ajar, and it’s a small blessing the man standing by the window in the room is alone. He turns his head over his shoulder at the sound of her entering.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Just one look at him, and Shiro feels part of herself go numb. The feeling part. The rational part.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The window rattles in its frame with the force of Lotor’s stunned shape slamming against it. He says something but Shiro doesn’t hear it. She’s a trapped storm ready to break its bounds and she has the cause of it all gasping under the pressure of her forearm against his throat.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Tell me where she is.” She snarls, vision tunneling and turning pitch black on everything that isn’t Lotor’s reddening, wide eyed face. She shoves the handle of her cane between his ribs. “Tell me!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro feels all of it, all the terror and the guilt and the pain and the worry that has turned her into this. A fragile, but whole ember that has burned its raging fire to a glow. A shape of a log that is really nothing but coal and ash, burning hot with whatever fire there is left.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She could kill this man. She could watch that purple smoke he’s yielded against her seep from his eyes as his lungs gave out.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But she won’t. Because Lotor isn’t important. Shiro isn’t important.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Only Keith.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Who?” It’s a wheeze, wrapped tightly in erratic breaths. Lotor looks frantic, frightened.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Do </span>
  <em>
    <span>not-</span>
  </em>
  <span>“ she digs the handle deeper, hard and bruising against skin and bone. “Toy with me. I am done playing your games.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He struggles, hands grabbing for her arms to yank them away. He is strong and Shiro isn’t in shape for this, not really. Still it takes him great effort to bend the arm on his neck enough to slip from Shiro’s hold.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t get far.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What are you on about?” He sneers, squirming out of his jacket when Shiro gets a hold of it. “Have you completely lost it?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s an unpleasant smack when Shiro’s cane collides with Lotor’s shoulder. And another. There’s a scream but she isn’t sure if it’s hers or his, just as he falls to the floor. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Where is Keith?” She yells it, screams it, whispers or mouths it. There’s no telling anymore. But Lotor hears her. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Keith</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” He curls his limbs to protect himself. “How the living hell should I know?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro doesn’t get a chance to react to his response. The commotion has drawn attention quickly, and before she can think, several people have her held back. She screams and fights, yelling because </span>
  <em>
    <span>no, fuck, no they can’t let Lotor win</span>
  </em>
  <span>. But they’ve got her held down seated on a chair, helpless to watch as a young man from accounting helps the weasel to his feet. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Defeat sinks in her chest like a marble in water. Icy water that fills her lungs and threatens to drown her where she sits. She feels the cold of it sting when that flawless face turns to find hers.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He’s careful in his approach, timid even. He’s disheveled and rumpled and bruised and Shiro hates him. She let her rage get the best of her and now she’s ruined it. Lotor comes out on top, and Keith may never come back.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Did she fight so hard to save her that she’s ruined Keith’s chances all together?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She might have killed her now.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith might die and it’s all because of Shiro and her stupid fucking lack of self control. She—</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Shiro.” It’s Lotor’s voice, strange to Shiro’s ears and much too close. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Takashi</span>
  </em>
  <span>, what on earth is going on?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro shakes her head, and only then does she realize she is crying. She really can’t take any more of these games.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You can have it all.” The words pour off her tongue between sobs. She feels nails dig into her arm to keep her still and sitting upright. “Anything you want, just- </span>
  <em>
    <span>please.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a long pause, whispers. Shiro doesn’t have the will to look up, even when the hands on her let go and there’s a series of footsteps leading out of the room. The door closes with a click.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Shirogane.” Lotor’s voice is forced, but collected. Shiro flinches when he puts a warm hand on her knee. “What has happened to Dr Kogane?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He sounds so earnest, so perfectly confused. It sends Shiro’s head spinning.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I swear to you whatever you think I’ve done, I have not.” He speaks slowly and clearly, as if talking to a child. “I have not seen Keith in months.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro tilts her head up to find the man crouching in front of her. He looks a mess, blood seeping through grey silk on his shoulder. But the gaze he catches her with is open, honest. It’s like nothing she’s seen in him before, in all their years working together.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“If you don’t wish to tell me, I won’t force you.” He continues carefully. “But I would sure like to know why you all but tried to kill me just now.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The words hit her square in the stomach. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>If Lotor was the one, ensuring he doesn’t wish to cause her harm wouldn’t come so easily. It’s a choice of phrasing that is more convincing than anything.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She attacked him, </span>
  <em>
    <span>hurt him</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry, I—“ Shiro’s heart thunders, and guilt stings like fresh cuts. “I thought you—“</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lotor rubs his thumb in a slow circle on Shiro’s knee, and makes a soothing sound. It part makes her want to punch him again, part thankful for the aid. She breathes.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Why did you think I did something to her?” He asks, never looking away.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You wanted me not to function, to get the ousting through-“ she babbles, fingers twisting in her own hair and pulling hard as she tries to ground herself. Just make the room stop fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>spinning</span>
  </em>
  <span>. “You were in my house. And Monday you were here—“</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lotor pales.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I have gone too far in my business attempts, that much is clear.” He says, looking nauseous now. “We will tend to that later. Why is it important I was here Monday?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She’ll admit he is extraordinary at running conversation, even when his opponent is a mere shaking shell of a person. There’s no wonder he’s gotten ahead in life.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“She was here Monday.” Shiro forces the words out through clenched teeth. They hurt, and the mental image of Keith in her office is worse. “She came here, </span>
  <em>
    <span>she said she would.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lotor nods slowly, lips pressed into a thin line.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t see her, but my visit was short.” He says. “Did you ask your sister?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The air sucks out of the room, oxygen pulled from Shiro’s lungs like a vacuum.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“My sister?” Her voice is weak, hardly even a whisper. It’s like someone’s poured a glass of icy water down her back.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lotor nods, eyes questioning. “I ran into her in the parking lot when I arrived. I only assume she doesn’t have much business in the building except for you, does she?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The surprise of Shiro springing to her feet has Lotor tumbling backwards, hissing in pain. Shiro doesn’t stay to help him. Doesn’t even bother with finding her cane before she makes a haste back to the elevators once more. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>If Lotor calls after her, it’s not the first time even this hour that she filters such things out.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Xinomavro</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>WARNING ⚠️ <br/>This chapter contains implied sexual assault through injury. No confirmed rape, but definitely torture. Any other sexual assault is up to the reader to imagine if it happened or not, as it’s suggested but not confirmed.</p>
<p>There’s a lot of blood and general suffering in here as well, but if you’ve read this far that’s hardly a surprise huh?</p>
<p>WARNING 2 ⚠️ <br/>This chapter does have a section of a flashback where Shiro and Adam are still happily married, before their issues began. They’re not even in the same room for the scene, but if shadam makes anyone uncomfortable I still want to give a heads up.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Alrighty!! Enjoy the suffering</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Xinomavro, </b>
  <b>
    <em>type: Blue</em>
  </b>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>If you wish to take a road less traveled, exploring the wines from countries such as Greece is a recommended option. The xinomavro takes hard work and skill to do right by, puckish if anything. But when the right hands and mind does the work, this rough diamond grape produces powerful, rich wines. However, even after the process is done, these wines come with tannins that are not to play with. Here’s a beverage that needs a while to breathe, relax, calm down.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>~*~</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Waking up is like pushing through a flurry of images and noise. Flashing lights on reflective metal. The Audi brand logo at the center of the steering wheel. Screeching tires. Crackling flames. It’s all at once and it’s loud, getting louder and louder and then—</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Stillness. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Behind her closed eyes there’s nothing now. All she hears is a rhythmic beeping, and someone breathing. It’s her. She’s the one who’s breathing. She knows somehow that she shouldn’t be, but she doesn’t know why. She tries to look, but her eyelids are too heavy.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She catches a blurry glimpse of brown hair, a grey sweater. A glint of her wifes glasses catching sunlight.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The next time she wakes, it’s dark. It’s easier on unadjusted eyes, and she’s not as tired anymore. Not as heavy. She blinks, and finds a ceiling. Grayish blue in the moonlight. A bandage sits like a blurry line at the edge of her vision, across the bridge of her nose.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She hurts.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>And she remembers, now. Parts of it anyway. It falls over her like a sheer blanket, darkening her vision as the realization lands and the questions start to storm her head.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>How bad is it?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Has she been out long?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Is anyone else hurt?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She must have made some noise. Grunted perhaps, maybe rustled the stiff hospital sheets, because she’s brought out of the screeching in her head by a voice saying her name. She says it so gently, makes Shiro tremble. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Her sister is here.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Welcome back.” She says, when Shiro refocuses her eyes on the woman scrambling to sit on the edge of her bed. Kuri grabs for Shiro’s hand, and it’s warm and rough in hers. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“It’s good to be back.” It stings to smile, but it’s worth it. Kuri looks like hell. “How long has it been?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Five days.” Kuri sniffles, and grimaces in what only Shiro would recognize as annoyance with her own vulnerability. Kuri always tries to be such tough shit. “Really scared us for a while, you—“</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The sentence bleeds into a breathless laugh, and Kuri shakes her head. “Your wife is going to put me where you are for making her go home and miss out on you waking up.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I think I saw her, earlier.” Shiro mutters. Her voice is still rough with sleep, and new cuts and scrapes make themselves known with every new breath. “Maybe I dreamt it.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“They said you woke up for a sec yesterday. She was here then, so that’s probably right.” Kuri squeezes her hand. Shiro tries to shift where she lies, to turn just a little so she won’t strain her neck looking at her sister. But a razor sharp kind of pain shoots through her entire leg and up her spine. She hisses, breathing hard through her nose. Kuri’s eyes go wide. “How are you feeling?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Like I got squashed in a car crash.” Shiro tries for cheeky, but her words come out on more of a pained groan than anything else.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Kuri leans back, her free hand on her chest in feigned surprise. “Really? You know exactly that happened to someone I know a few days ago.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yeah?” Shiro manages a grin, and Kuri matches it.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Oh, yeah.” Kuri leans back in, and stage whispers close to Shiro’s ear. “I hear her car looks like a crumpled beer can now.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She laughs the best she can, and surprises the nurse that enters the room just then. He says it’s good to see her in such good spirits, and that the on call doctor will come around as soon as possible now that she’s awake.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>When he leaves, Kuri stands as well. “I should call Adam, or she’ll have my head.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro snorts, but watches with a certain kind of eagerness as Kuri fetches her phone. She comes back to sit next to Shiro, and angles the screen to fit the both of them before she attempts a video call.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Adam answers on the third ring. It’s dark on her end, but Shiro can practically see her. Ruffled and wide awake, bags under her eyes, fumbling for her glasses on the nightstand and the light switch at once.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hello? Kuri?” There’s some more shuffling, and then the light comes on. Shiro sees it when the glasses fall over Adam’s eyes and her vision clears. She’d wave, if she had the strength. Instead she smiles warmly, and waits for the frozen look on her wife’s face to melt away.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hey, honey.” She tries, her voice small and thick suddenly now that she sees the proof of what she’s put Adam through in the past few days.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Adam breaks into silent tears, glasses fogging up quickly. Shiro wants her here, to be near her. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Adam wants that, too. The call ends within two minutes to allow Adam to get herself together and into the car.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She’s too tired to really hear what the nurses have to say when two of them come into her room, their voices buzzing around her head but not getting past the ears. Kuri is there, holding her hand and listening for her.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s a relief when they leave. She’s tired, and foggy. She allows herself to drift, somewhere halfway into sleep. A few minutes must pass like that, where she’s suspended between spaces. She tries to reflect but it’s like her thoughts are too fragile. Like soap bubbles bursting at her touch, leaving nothing but specks behind. She thinks maybe she likes it a little.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Her brain is always churning. Always processing. Working on the next thing. And the next. And the next.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s good to be at zero. Just nothing.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>But a stab of pain in her arm drags her right back to the hospital bed. She startles awake, to see what hurt her. There’s a bandage on her arm, long fingers retreating from it just now.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She looks up at Kuri, and it’s an icy thing that pokes her in the ribs then. For just a second, between one blink and the next, the girl sitting at her bedside is her sister. But it’s not the sister that welcomed her back half an hour ago. It’s not the woman who stood next to her on her wedding day. It’s a girl. A young girl, with glossy black hair and their dad’s leather jacket. A teenager with a pale face, and eyes that make Shiro want to cry. Glassy, almost unseeing, but with pupils so wide Shiro can barely see the warm grey they both share.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The real Kuri is back in the next second, but Shiro sees it still. That look in her sister's eye she was sure she’d never have to see again. That they were done with forever. But it’s there, fading fast and disappearing but the chill in Shiro tells her that it’s real.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The rapidly growing patch of fresh blood staining the bandage on her arm tells her that it’s real.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She’s in the hospital for three more days. Kuri almost never leaves her side, and not once is there a single sign of that look. And Shiro searches for it. Watches her sister so closely, the woman starts to wonder. To ask if she’s alright.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>A few weeks more and the search for signs begins to feel silly. Back then, Kuri hid her darkness in shallow waters. Not even when she tried had she managed to hide it away, not when her twin knew where to look. Secrets never held up well between them.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>And they never had before that, and never after.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Perhaps what Shiro saw in the hospital was just a dream. A mix of pain and medication and exhaustion and the world coming back together after a near death experience.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Nothing ever points at the contrary. And so, soon enough, Shiro forgets.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Somewhere, beyond the little part of her brain that has put all the rest to sleep, Shiro knows this is her nightmare. The thing she woke up sweating from for years, a long time ago. That dream where she had to tear her sister away from someone that she loves, to save them from someone she also loves. Sometimes, in the dream, the person she had to save was Kuri. A younger Kuri, a happier Kuri. Sometimes it was Adam. A few times herself.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>This is that dream.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>For eighteen years, it’s been a distant memory. Something she looked back on with a lighter heart, happy to know her sister got the help she needed. To know it will never come true, because that darkness is gone and nearly forgotten.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Yet here she is.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She can’t remember making it out of the building. Doesn’t recall driving here, even. But now that she’s here, pulled up on the grass outside her sister's perfectly suburban house, everything happens in slow motion.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It doesn’t make sense, even if it does. Kuri wouldn’t do this. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Part of her repeats it as a mantra, echoing in the emptiness of her skull. It says she’s just going to make sure. Just check so that she can quiet the voice that says it’s true. Just go inside and confirm that Keith isn’t there. That she never was. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But something bigger than her head knows. Her heart leaps and thrashes and tugs at its bounds because it is sure. Her skin tingles like she can already feel Keith against her skin, like she’s that close.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The conflict roaring like war beneath her skin cripples her more than her pain has ever done, hurts worse. It’s a marathon to make it to the door at the glass veranda in the back.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn’t have a key. Kuri only bought the place recently. Shiro’s only set her foot inside a handful of times.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Glass shatters into glitter, and it’s not until after it’s done that she feels the dirt from the rock cling to her palm. She doesn’t feel the shard catching on her pant leg and tearing the fabric.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the living room, it feels somehow bizarre. It’s bright and clean, homey. But pain and terror ripples through the floor like little earthquakes beneath Shiro’s feet.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the hallway hangs a framed photograph, blown up large and printed in black and white. She sees her own laughing face, the one so much like her own beside it. Happy, and blissfully unaware.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She feels nauseous.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn’t know where to start. Doesn’t know this house. There’s no basement, no attic. No obvious choice in which to look first. And she’s too scattered to think. She’s torn open nearly every door on the first floor before it even occurs to her to call out.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The sound sticks in her throat like glue. She’s really doing this, really accusing her twin sister of this. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>If she’s wrong,</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Keith?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>—- will Kuri ever forgive her?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Keith!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And if she’s right,</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Keith</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>—- what does that mean? </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s no answer. No voice carrying through the walls.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But then.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She’s in the study, where the last remaining moving boxes still clutter the space, when she hears it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Slow, heavy thumps.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro touches the wall where she thinks it comes from, her hands trembling so hard the thumps are hard to feel. But they’re there. They’re definitely there. She calls out again, her voice growing frantic with every repeat of Keith’s name.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The next thump is harder than the previous, a slam of something soft and heavy against the concrete wall and plaster.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s all the response she needs. Shiro paws and presses to the wall where it leads her out of the room, down the hall. Next is the door to the bathroom, with the freshly painted door and the metal WC stuck to its glossy surface. But the wall stretches long. Too long, with the size of the bathroom where she’s been before, and the study she just left. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>An image comes to mind. A fleeting thought from months ago, when she used the bathroom right up ahead. She’d admired the remodeling, the gorgeous result of hard work. She’d been washing her hands when it occurred to her, when she caught it just behind her own reflection.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>For a second or less, she’d wondered where that door went. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Everything is on hyperdrive. Her heart races and she hears it in her ears, feels it in her entire body as it thunders. Her shoes on the floor are loud, too loud when she steps into the bathroom where they meet hard stone tiles.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The door is white and pretty with a gold plated handle, an old school lock. It looks so non-threatening, so perfectly normal.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And it’s locked.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro pulls and rattles the handle, part animal trying to make way. Part assessing the give of the lock mechanism.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The slam is lightning all through her body, electric where it fizzes out at her fingertips after her side collides with the door.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It flies open on the first try.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>—-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What hits Shiro first is the smell. Sour and tangy, blood and vomit. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Then she sees, the curled up figure pressed to the opposite wall. Shiro’s heart somersaults, torn between sinking and rising high. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Keith—“</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It hurts like a knife cutting through muscle but Shiro doesn’t care, she doesn’t even flinch when she falls on her knees to the floor by the woman she’s broken her own body and soul over, time and time again by now.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith looks fragile, like a wilted bouquet where she sits in dried smears and puddles of her own blood. Naked short for a thin tank top, her skin icy cold to Shiro’s touch. The muscles beneath are strung tight, shaking so much it must hurt.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Her face looks alien, torn and dirty beyond all reason, and still it’s the most beautiful thing. Still it’s Keith.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s Keith it’s Keith it’s Keith.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“God, Keith—“ Shiro cups the cheek that isn’t sliced open in her hand as gently as she can muster with her trembling hands. Tired, half conscious eyes blink up at her, slowly.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Shiro?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The voice is broken and weak, an open wound. But it shakes Shiro’s heart in a wonderful way, past the horror. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the past few days, she’s imagined never hearing that voice say her name again, and it nearly took her sanity.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I found you.” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith makes a pitiful noise when Shiro leans in, bumps their foreheads together. Rationally, she should hurry to get Keith out of these bounds. But it’s like she’s cemented in place, the magnetic pull of Keith’s body too strong to break after all that’s happened. She’s here, and she’s real, and Shiro never wants to let her go again for as long as she lives.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She can’t even begin to sort this out, all this mess. Her mind is blank except for </span>
  <em>
    <span>Keith Keith Keith</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a rough whisper, and it’s ridiculous because those words were just on the tip of her tongue; but it wasn’t Shiro who said them.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith rarely apologizes, for anything. And Shiro doesn’t have the words to describe in how many ways she’s not supposed to start now, here. So she only cradles Keith’s head in her hands, as carefully as she possibly can, and presses a gentle kiss to her forehead.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You know,” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The voice cuts through the room like a spinning blade, slicing right through where it hits. Keith jolts violently at the sound, and Shiro feels like her entire chest turns to stone. Her lungs, her heart.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the doorway, Kuri looks every bit the doctor she is. Neat hair, lab coat, name tag. All except for where her feet are bare, like she took the time to kick off her shoes just to enter soundlessly. She’s smiling, but it isn’t the sinister grin Shiro remembers from way back when.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It makes it all that much worse.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“-it was actually your groundskeeper who said I should install a silent alarm.” Kuri speaks so casually, with pleasant surprise as if she’s just found her sister making a surprise visit for coffee and small talk. She gives the phone in her hand a long look, and puts it in her pocket. “I should thank him.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro is too stunned to speak. So overwhelmed, doing anything but cling to Keith and stare at the woman that looks so much like her, her oldest friend, as she proceeds to shrug out of her coat.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It falls to the floor, and the sound is too loud in the silence. Shiro realizes she isn’t breathing.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Although, I’ll say I’m a little bummed you found me out so soon.” She says with a frown. “What gave me away?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro doesn’t speak. Couldn’t if she wanted to. The room is cold and Keith is here and so is Kuri and everything smells like blood.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Half of it would be too much.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Kuri purses her lips in disappointment. Then shrugs. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I really am sorry about this.” She says then, leaning her shoulder on the door frame. “You’re my sister and I love you, I do. But it’s like-“</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith trembles, nudges closer to where Shiro has curled to shield her from even as much as the long shadow cast by the woman in the door. Kuri pays her no mind.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“-you always had a piece of me.” Kuri smiles, almost wistfully. “My shrink said it’s common with twins, to feel like that other person is part of you? But it’s more than that with us, isn’t it?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She cocks her head at Shiro, like she’s expecting Shiro to understand. Like she knows what they’re talking about. And it’s there now, like a flicker in her eyes. That darkness.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“All my life, I had to </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel</span>
  </em>
  <span> through you.” Kuri continues, and there’s a hysterical edge to her tone suddenly. It pulls at Shiro’s heartstrings like a careless child with a fragile toy. “Every knee bruise, every ache and broken bone. I looked at you and I saw how it changed you, how it made you feel things I couldn’t feel. When you got hurt, and when I did. You hurt for me.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro clenches her jaw, and again she hurts. Because that’s true. She always did look at her twins injuries and she felt them like they were her own. She cried and she fuzzed when Kuri couldn’t. She did because she cared, and worried. Because she didn’t want her sister to accidentally injure herself beyond repair. She needed Kuri to know that pain was real, and awful as important. She realized Kuri experienced her own kind of pain through Shiro. That much was obvious very early on.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It was supposed to be a good thing. A way of protecting her sister.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro feels Keith’s shallow breath on her neck, her rabid heart.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“After a while, I realized.” Kuri traces the many scars on one of her hands with a fingertip. “I had no idea what I was feeling. If what I thought was hurt really was, if rejection and anxiety and grief were at all real. If anything I felt could be real, when I had never felt pain before.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro watches, and it’s like her sister is withering away before her eyes, replaced by something only vaguely reminiscent of her. The immediate response is grief, squeezing on Shiro’s heart and smothering it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“But then </span>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>hurt </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Kuri continues, and Shiro knows just what she’s talking about. That day in the school parking lot, when Kuri pushed her. “You were more mad at me than you were bruised, but that look in your eyes was so… real. I felt it.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Something like sadness falls over Kuri’s expression, just for a second. It’s gone before Shiro can process it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I knew what it was. I did. But I didn’t want to go there, you know?” Shiro doesn’t think she does. “So I figured maybe it would work if I was the one to inflict it, on someone else. Maybe that would get me there. Maybe I could feel, if I was the reason behind the pain.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro would think her heart breaks, if it wasn’t beaten to a pulp already. It was obvious to her, back then, that Kuri’s reason to get into fights had to do with her inability to feel pain. Shiro figured it was something like this. That she tried to feel through other people, or replace the empty parts inside meant for physical pain by hurting herself mentally. Shiro never got any of it confirmed. Not in words, anyway. But she always felt she didn’t need to.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Perhaps she should have insisted harder for her twin to share her thoughts.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“And I wasn’t wrong! It did work, to some extent. But it didn’t change the fact.” The way she looks at Shiro is frightening, wild and freezing like an avalanche. “If I wanted to truly experience pain, it had to be you. When you feel, I feel.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Kuri takes a couple of slow, careful steps closer, hunched over like she’s approaching a wild animal. It’s oddly backwards. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“We’ve always been connected, Kashi.” She grins, wolfish. Up close, her eyes are a black void. “Twin mumbo jumbo. I need you. You’re part of me.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro’s breath hitches when chilly fingertips touch the apple of her cheek, tracing the scar across her nose.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Sometimes I think perhaps you’re not even real. Just a manifestation of all the things I can’t have or feel.” Kuri muses, and Shiro hangs on by a thread. Just barely not falling apart where she sits, with her haunted twin sister crouching over her and a half conscious, bleeding and bruised Keith on a cold tile floor.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>All the cliché things to say whir inside her head.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Let me help you.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It doesn’t have to be like this.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>We can help you out of this, make you better.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn’t want to say any of it. Kuri would never listen. Shiro can almost hear the cruel laugh she would be met with if she tried.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>You’re crazy.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>What the hell is wrong with you.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Snap out of it.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I tried helping you for a long time. I was so good at feeling nothing, just for you.” Kuri pets Shiro’s hair, twirling a pearly white lock around her finger. “But then you had your accident. I lost you. You weren’t the same anymore.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The lock gets tucked back behind Shiro’s ear.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You were so bitter. So full of negativity and pain.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro blocks the hand coming for Keith’s bare skin without thinking, instinctively unwilling to let Kuri touch. Kuri snorts.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It brought everything back. I couldn’t help myself. You were miserable and I felt it like it was me. It was horrifying.” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The words don’t match the tone, spoken like about a precious gift. Something delicious and wonderful.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It was a crazy time for the both of us.” Kuri tilts her head, frowning at the mess of black hair tucked under Shiro’s chin. “And then this little bitch came along, and ruined it all. She changed you again. Ruined you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Strong fingers pry at Shiro’s where they’re curled protectively on Keith’s shoulder, forcing her to let go. Kuri takes her hand, brings it to press against her own cheek. Kuri’s skin is colder than Shiro’s. But not as cold as Keith’s.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I know you could tell I didn’t like her, Shiro.” Kuri sounds accusing, annoyed even as she nuzzles the palm of Shiro’s hand. “But you didn’t care, did you?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She hums to herself, hardly expecting Shiro to answer. “I guess it was reckless of me to pull all this. But I was angry with you, sister. And I couldn’t let her come back, could I?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro’s hand falls limp when Kuri drops it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you both now. I didn’t think this far!” She speaks like it’s casual. Like the two women on her floor is a mild inconvenience.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro doesn’t see it until in the last second, the shadow blending with Kuri’s on the white tile. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s not a moment to react, and it’s just as well.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The smack of something hard striking bone is sickening, a huge relief and a horror all at once.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Kuri slumps to the floor at Shiro’s feet.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s sudden, and so completely unexpected, Shiro can’t grasp at anything. She was mentally preparing herself to have to fight her sister, injure and restrain her because she’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>ill </span>
  </em>
  <span>and </span>
  <em>
    <span>dangerous</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Suddenly she doesn’t need to, and the relief is too great to comprehend.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“No wonder you make such a good author, Shirogane. Living a life like this.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro blinks up at the person standing in front of them, Kuri’s lax body between them. She almost laughs.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lotor appears conflicted, which is hardly a surprise. He lifts the weapon in his hand, the carved metal knob stained red with Kuri’s blood. “You left this.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You followed me?” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s all she can bring herself to ask, words escaping her in a much different way than they had moments just before. Lotor raises a flawless brow in mock surprise.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You maim me in broad daylight, screaming about your missing ex, only to run out the second I mention your twin sister?” He looks at her like she’s dumb. “Any idiot could tell you needed help, my friend. This is not the nature I figured my help would come in handy, surely, but here we are.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>His words are neutral, but the shroud is torn. The man is breathing shallow, his skin taking on a green color. Terrified.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn’t have the time to gather the words, to even try to say thank you in any type of way that will even come close to being enough. Lotor cuts the moment short much too early for any of that. He digs through his pocket, and procures a small pocket knife. He drops it on Shiro’s lap.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll make the calls. You do what you need to do.” He says, and bends to make sure the person he just struck down is out cold. Then he turns swiftly on his heel, and hurriedly leaves the room.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro’s brain is a roller coaster without an exit point. So many things, </span>
  <em>
    <span>too many things </span>
  </em>
  <span>that she cannot wrap her head around has happened in too little time. Her stomach churns with the turbulence. But her hands work with a mind of their own, clumsily releasing Keith from where she’s bound. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>On a good day, gathering Keith in her arms and carrying her would be extremely difficult. After all the abuse as of late, it shouldn’t be possible. Still somehow, Shiro finds herself laying Keith out on the couch in the living room. Maybe it’s the adrenaline, the chock, or both, but she doesn’t feel it. There’s no pain when she sinks to her knees next to the couch to lean her head on Keith’s hip and watch her breathe.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro’s covered her with a blanket, and it’s so fucking bizarre how it’s one she bought for her sister last Christmas. But worse how Shiro can’t unsee the many marks hidden under there, and how she knows she’ll never forget them.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith was bare from the waist down, cut and bruised from her swollen toes to her stomach. The black and blue on the insides of her thighs, the long and shallow cut in a straight line from belly button and down, stopping no more than an inch from where the mound splits in two between her legs. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The broken fingers. The deep slice across her cheek. The blood caught in the creases between her teeth.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro can’t begin to imagine, what it’s been like. What Keith has gone through in the past few days. How it will be with her for the rest of her life.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She realizes, even if it tears her apart, that perhaps Keith won’t be able, won’t want, to be with her after this.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It would be justified. Rational.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But as Keith drifts off into a restless sleep, and they wait for authorities and ambulance to arrive, Shiro selfishly hopes and wishes. Prays, even, that won’t be the case.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh </p>
<p>writing this chap killed me. pls talk to me</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Here’s 2k of real soft shit</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I want to go home.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro stares, tension leaving her shoulders like air seeping from a tire.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“As in-“ </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The past day and a half has been an anxious blur. Keith has been asleep for most of it, tucked away in a private hospital room to rest. Shiro, on the other hand, has barely sat down.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And between police reports and interrogations and researching facilities for Kuri, she’s taken some time to think. To steep herself for the moment Keith tells her she wants to leave.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Now that the dust has settled, any other options seem out of reach.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But Keith reaches for her hand, resting on top of it with a familiar warmth that has finally returned to Keith’s skin.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“As in home, home.” She says, surely. Shiro searches her eyes for any doubt, but finds only determination beyond the fatigue. A strong, brilliant blue gaze Shiro has found herself caught in so many times before. “I want you to take me home.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>—-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s late. Outside the wind howls and whines, giant rain drops smatter on the windows. In only a few hours, it’s been a week. Seven days that have felt like months, years.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She finds it hard to believe it’s truly only been such a short time, since she stepped out on the patio to find her key to hell waiting in a little wooden box.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And now she’s here.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The lone candle flickers on the tray, making warm patterns on the glossy metal and the little vase standing next to the candle holder. In the vase; a single rose - strawberry red and in full bloom. A small box of hand made chocolate truffles also sits on the tray. Shiro cleans up the remnants of the roses stem, the wrap the chocolates came in.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The kitchen clock shows eleven forty five PM. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She’s exhausted. But since the moment Keith set foot back into the house, Shiro’s been on alert. As if, if she were to relax, Keith would disappear. Or she’d wake up, and the past forty eight hours would turn out to be a dream. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith might go up in smoke again.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Just being on another floor, in another room feels like too far away. For the most part, she’s been watching Keith rest. Made sure she has everything she needs. Tended to the bandages that need it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Still, she feels the distance. The gaping chasm created by everything that’s happened, with Shiro left standing on the other side from where Keith is.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They’ve got a lot to talk about, but Shiro can’t bring herself to be the one to start. Keith may not be ready. She needs to rest, and collect her thoughts for as long as she needs.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>That’s okay with Shiro. The middle ground they are at isn’t what she’d wish for them to have together, but it is universes better than not having Keith in her life at all.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>A gentle cough makes her head snap to the door, and it’s almost a little too much like a week ago. Kolivan appearing in that doorway. Except this time, she’s asked him to come.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s the first time they’ve had a moment, since everything went down a couple of days ago. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Takashi.” He says, taking a short step into the kitchen. He looks mildly conflicted for a second, and changes his tone. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Shiro</span>
  </em>
  <span>. I am sorry you had to go through what happened alone. I noticed a change in your behavior but I didn’t address it, and I want to apologize.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro’s heart swells for the stoic, nearly seven foot tall man of few words that she has learned to love like family. She smiles, a little sadly. “I wouldn’t have told you anything either way. It’s alright, no need to apologize.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I assumed as much.” Kolivan straightens his posture, the grumpy arch of his brow falling back into place.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro looks at him for a moment, just appreciating the fact he’s here. That he’s stuck with her so long without complaint. That he still cares for these grounds after so many years of Shiro being a bitter pain in the ass.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And then she remembers something, and her eyes scrunch into a squint.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not the only one who’s behavior has changed as of late, though.” Kolivan’s mask doesn’t falter, doesn’t reveal anything. But Shiro doesn’t need it to. “Why have </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>been acting so weird, sneaking around?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Kolivan grumbles, and for the first time in all the years they’ve known each other, the gentle giant actively averts his gaze. Instead he looks to the window, where the rain is still coming down hard. For a little while, droplets on glass is the only sound in the kitchen. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She nearly gives in, just about to tell her friend he doesn’t need to tell her anything, when he finally speaks.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you aware, there used to be another back door to this house?” He asks.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro frowns. “I was not. Why?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“The owners of the property back in the seventies, they wanted a back patio that was above the level of the lake. But as you can see if you look for it, the house was built on a gentle slope.” He still doesn’t look at her as he speaks. Shiro is dumbfounded. She has no idea where he’s going with talk of the house’s remodeling history. “They raised the backyard by four feet, and built the patio there.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Kolivan unpockets his phone, and taps the screen a few times. Then he sets it on the kitchen island, and slides it across to Shiro.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“In doing so, they covered the original back door. It was sealed and covered by a brick wall on the inside.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro tries to make sense of the photo on the screen, a pile of rubble, orange bricks from their basement broken and scattered around a heavy duty wooden door.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The realization pulls a breathless laugh from her belly like a punch. She looks up at the caretaker, stunned.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“If we dig a path, and unseal the door-“ a rush of giddy happiness tingles in her bones as she says it, visualizes it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Kolivan nods, a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “You could enter the cellar from the outside.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She laughs again, thoroughly surprised. Delighted. Verging on euphoric. “Why didn’t you tell me before? You wanted to surprise me?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a tease she can’t help in her tone. Kolivan doesn’t even twitch.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Your ex wife found the old blueprints among her things recently and gave them to me. Keith and I agreed it would make a good Christmas gift.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro jolts. She and Adam are not on bad terms, in any way, anymore. She can’t see a reason why Adam wouldn’t give the blueprints to Shiro herself, unless she’d thought the same as Kolivan. And </span>
  <em>
    <span>Keith</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Keith knew?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Kolivan nods. “I couldn’t do much for you when she left. You were so distraught, I thought perhaps this project would… cheer you up, somewhat.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro can’t contain it. She limps around the island, and wraps her arms around Kolivan’s sturdy torso. He doesn’t reciprocate, but neither does he push her away. It’s affectionate enough.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Thank you.” Shiro whispers into Kolivan’s shoulder, before she pulls back to smile at him. He gives her a polite nod.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Shall we get going, then?” He says, before the moment becomes too mushy and emotional for him to handle. He moves quickly out of Shiro’s embrace to pick up the tray.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>—-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kolivan carries the tray up stairs for her. She still finds it annoying, and undignifying, that she can’t do so herself. But tonight she’s grateful for the help. There’s no room for her insecurities here.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s one minute past midnight, when the two of them enter the master bedroom together as quietly as they can. There, wrapped up in cream colored sheets, Keith breathes heavy and slow in her sleep. The bedside lamp is lit, but dim, giving them some visual in the dark. Kolivan sets the tray on the nightstand, and sneaks back out the door without another glance. Shiro gives him a smile, even if he doesn’t see it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She settles at Keith’s bedside, propping her cane at its side like she always does. For the thousandth time since Keith came home, Shiro watches her sleep for a bit. Just revels in the rise and fall of her chest and the healthy warm color of her cheeks. The inkspill of glossy black hair on her pillow. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith is so beautiful, it’s more than Shiro can stand sometimes. Just as she discovered with her smell, Shiro thought her minds eye knew just how beautiful this woman is. How otherworldly. But she was wrong again. She’s sure now, that not even something as strong and accurate as recent memory will ever catch Keith’s essence. This woman is an art piece that must be experienced, seen up close. And still then, it is hard to comprehend.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It feels mean to wake her. But it’s something that they do. Have done, ever since they first met. The clock is already five minutes past. She’s late.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith stirs when Shiro squeezes her shoulder lightly, whispers her name.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She’s adorable, small and sleepy as she smacks her lips and searches for Shiro’s eyes in the half light.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Shiro? Wh’a time is’t?” </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro smiles. “It’s midnight. Happy birthday, Keith.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith’s eyes slide open wide, rosy lips forming a little o when she realizes. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>For a long second, Shiro thinks maybe it’s too much. Maybe Keith would rather not think about her birthday right now. Maybe a tradition they used to share as a couple when everything was perfect isn’t suitable right now.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But then Keith huffs a laugh, eyes alight for the first time since Shiro got her back. She smacks Shiro on the arm with her un-injured hand. “I can’t believe you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro would worry, but Keith says the words with so much feeling. So much warmth. She looks over to where the little tray is, then back at Shiro. “Where’s the champagne?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro shakes her head, smiles wider because she can’t stop herself. “You’re on strong medication. No champagne for you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith snorts, but doesn’t argue. Her eyelids start to become heavy again. “Do I at least get a kiss?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro freezes. This is the first thing except for her wish to go home, to </span>
  <em>
    <span>their </span>
  </em>
  <span>home, that has sparked some hope in Shiro since Keith came back. But she also knows, like she just said, the woman is on strong meds for sleep and pain, and Shiro can’t let herself lean into what might fade as soon as Keith starts getting better.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Shiro,” Keith’s voice is cotton soft, warm fingers squeezing Shiro’s forearm. “I know your big brain is going wild with theories on what comes next for us. And I also know you’re probably set on one that doesn’t look good.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro’s suddenly back, outside a bar in a light and warm rain, with bright red lips speaking to her firmly.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I’ll tell you who you are.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s no limit to this woman and how far into Shiro she can reach. It’s not reading her mind, but knowing it. Tapping into Shiro’s soul like it’s the easiest thing in the world.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I missed you so much.” Keith whispers, eyes turning glossy and wet. “I should never have left in the first place, and now I—“</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It’s plain nature for Shiro to lean closer into Keith’s space, cover and shield her from the rest of the room, the rest of the world.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What happened, it was—“ the words catch in Keith’s throat. Yet still Shiro hears them. “It won’t just go away. But I’m not leaving you again.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith’s hand slides down Shiro’s wrist, fingers tangling with hers. She pulls on their hands, brings them to rest against her chin. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you remember what you said you did, after your accident, with the driving?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro nods. She refused back then, to let her accident steal away her love for cars and driving. She bought her dream car, made Adam drive her around in it until she was well enough to do it herself. When it got hard, she pushed past it. She wouldn’t let her trauma take something that she loved away.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She sees Keith’s point.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re the silver Mercedes, Shirogane. And this,” she kisses one of Shiro’s knuckles, eyes locked on Shiro’s. She’s determined, wide awake again. Gorgeous. “-this is the highway. And we’re going to drive, and drive, and drive until we’re in Bordeaux, just like we planned. You okay with that?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Shiro sniffles, nodding through a breathless laugh. This woman is ridiculous, a little nutty, and amazing.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Keith breathes a pleased sigh, canines flashing white when she grins.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“So kiss me.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>It’s over y’all!!<br/>Thank you so much for powering through all the pain and suffering I crammed into this fic. Your comments have made me so freaking happy and made finishing this fic so much more fun! It’s been a wild ride, thank you 🖤🖤🖤</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Oh and, as a bonus;</p>
<p>Kuri does become institutionalized for the rest of her life, at a top notch facility where she finally finds some peace. She leads a fairly good life, and short for a couple of dips in the early days of her treatment, she never hurts anyone again. </p>
<p>Keith tries her best to be rational, and to remember that the woman who hurt her and Shiro is ill; not evil. She struggles with it, and it’s a part of her and Shiro’s relationship that strains. But she gets there, eventually, and a few years after everything happened, she starts to tag along sometimes when Shiro visits her sister.</p>
<p>The backyard patio is torn out and rebuilt, and a long, sloped walkway allows Shiro to walk unhindered to and from the wine cellar she loves. Perhaps, just maybe, the contractor doing the job is a man that rivals even Kolivan in height, and the two of them hit it off. Maybe Koli takes him for a joyride in his precious Pontiac.</p>
<p>Shiro never publishes another book. But that doesn’t stop her from writing. Somewhere down the line, she finds herself writing again just for the joy of it. Diaries, short stories. Even long stories. But she doesn’t share them with the world. It’s enough, just to share it with her world.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>SPOILER TAGS:<br/>kidnapping, hostage situation, some blood and violence</p><p>It’s getting harder to sound believable when I say I don’t like crime entertainment when I keep writing crime fics lmao.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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